Hi TFP community,
My first time posting in here — my husband and I just bought a house and opened the pool for the first time to a complete swamp! (Photos included — the very green ones, with tons of leaves & debris).
We are hobbling along with very old equipment as well, an old cast iron Anthony Apollo VA 52 DE filter.. which fills up in about 30 minutes because of how dirty the pool is, but due go a broken backwash valve we have to take the whole thing apart to clean. So it’s just been a process we try to chip away at in the evenings.
The pool company originally opened and shocked with 10 gal of liquid shock. We’ve cycled the filter probably 5x and put another 5 gal of liquid shock in. We’ve also been running a robot vacuum after sucking all the leaves out. We were starting to see some progress but it was very slow progress. It went from green to cloudy to blue cloudy, but that all took us a few weeks.
I looked into the SLAM method but it seemed reliant on CYA levels and pool company said not to worry about adding CYA until it is more blue or clear. But I don’t know if the reason the process is moving so slowly is because we’re losing too much chlorine to the sun? I tested with the FAS DPD test a few weeks back and our FC and CC were about 4ppm, CYA of course at 0.
We unfortunately had to deprioritize getting her clean for a week or so due to other home repairs arising, and now we are back to green / more cloudy, and have also come back to lots of algae growth and these concerning black spots on the floor of the pool - are these black algae? Any thoughts on how to remove?
Due to the nature of how quickly our filter fills up, it’s been off for this past week, so I’m sure the combination of that + heat + lack of chlorine is what’s led to these spots. It would actually be encouraging to hear that’s the cause of them, and that they are treatable - but this is why I’m posting in here as we are not sure. We also have lots of surrounding overgrown vegetation that was recently treated with herbicides, I’m not sure if that would have anything to do with it.
Is it worth to keep at cleaning it? We’re trying to get it back to clear but it’s very hard when we both work full time. At what point does it make sense to give up and just drain it? Will we need to physically get into the pool any scrub any of this algae out?
Please help! We are brand new to pool ownership and open to any / all recommendations. I’ve included the pictures as a hopefully helpful reference.
Thank you in advance,
Grace
My first time posting in here — my husband and I just bought a house and opened the pool for the first time to a complete swamp! (Photos included — the very green ones, with tons of leaves & debris).
We are hobbling along with very old equipment as well, an old cast iron Anthony Apollo VA 52 DE filter.. which fills up in about 30 minutes because of how dirty the pool is, but due go a broken backwash valve we have to take the whole thing apart to clean. So it’s just been a process we try to chip away at in the evenings.
The pool company originally opened and shocked with 10 gal of liquid shock. We’ve cycled the filter probably 5x and put another 5 gal of liquid shock in. We’ve also been running a robot vacuum after sucking all the leaves out. We were starting to see some progress but it was very slow progress. It went from green to cloudy to blue cloudy, but that all took us a few weeks.
I looked into the SLAM method but it seemed reliant on CYA levels and pool company said not to worry about adding CYA until it is more blue or clear. But I don’t know if the reason the process is moving so slowly is because we’re losing too much chlorine to the sun? I tested with the FAS DPD test a few weeks back and our FC and CC were about 4ppm, CYA of course at 0.
We unfortunately had to deprioritize getting her clean for a week or so due to other home repairs arising, and now we are back to green / more cloudy, and have also come back to lots of algae growth and these concerning black spots on the floor of the pool - are these black algae? Any thoughts on how to remove?
Due to the nature of how quickly our filter fills up, it’s been off for this past week, so I’m sure the combination of that + heat + lack of chlorine is what’s led to these spots. It would actually be encouraging to hear that’s the cause of them, and that they are treatable - but this is why I’m posting in here as we are not sure. We also have lots of surrounding overgrown vegetation that was recently treated with herbicides, I’m not sure if that would have anything to do with it.
Is it worth to keep at cleaning it? We’re trying to get it back to clear but it’s very hard when we both work full time. At what point does it make sense to give up and just drain it? Will we need to physically get into the pool any scrub any of this algae out?
Please help! We are brand new to pool ownership and open to any / all recommendations. I’ve included the pictures as a hopefully helpful reference.
Thank you in advance,
Grace
So you have decisions really. Simply put the 
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