# Pool owners - A question



## d_rek (Nov 6, 2013)

So we got one of those easy setup pool things gifted to us. 18'x48" round, metal frame, plenty of pool for the kids to enjoy.

Setup was easy peezy, everything hooked up and apparently functioning properly. No issues there. Water delivered on thursday filled pool up about 3/4 of the way with crystal clear city water.

But after we got water delivered and I topped up the pool with well water it became extremely cloudy. I ran the filter for 12+ hours yesterday, having to backwash and rinse the sand filter every couple of hours. Today per the manufacturer recommendation I started the salt water system to start shocking the water as well. Everything has been running for about 8 hrs again already, with one flush of the filter sand today as the pressure on the filter tank is holding better than it was yesterday. Seems like it's getting clearer, but only by degrees. I assume it will probably take a few more days at this rate.

My question is this... *Can I run the pump and the saltwater system non-stop until it's clear water?* Or should I give those things a break? Not getting a definitive answer searching online or from the instruction booklets, so figured i'd ask here.

Thanks,
d_rek


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## hommer23 (Nov 20, 2012)

Not going to hurt the pump to run it for 24 hours plus at a time. Just have to watch the salt content of the pool (salinity) and test water until you get it where you want it.


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## Big Frank 25 (Feb 21, 2002)

How's the PH, alkalinity and calcium hardness? There are clarifiers to add.


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## MichiFishy (Sep 17, 2019)

Won't bother the filter to let it run, I run mine for 2 days when I open the pool. Just filtering the water won't necessarily clear it up though, like was mentioned you have to keep all the parameters in check to keep the water crystal clear.


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## Big Frank 25 (Feb 21, 2002)

Raise Calcium Hardness with ice melt. Calcium Chloride

Raise Alkalinity with baking soda.


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## Ronnie D (Dec 8, 2020)

Did you receive a ph or water test kit w/ your new pool? Until you have the existing levels, you cant adjust what you don't know. City water contains chlorine and flourides and well water is a crapshoot. Check your strainer often and it's possible ya might have to change the sand in the filter once till the water is clear. The pumps are rated continuous duty so no problem there as long as nothing is obstructed and there are cores you can install in the strainer to clear water conditions once they are determined. Let the saline unit run as long as it wants to, it's sensing something in the water and performing the way it's supposed to to correct it or it's stuck and clouding your water which can't be determined w/ out a sample test.


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## d_rek (Nov 6, 2013)

Thanks. Ran the pump and salt unit all night last night and cleared up considerably - I can see the bottom of the pool again!

I did receive a pH test kit and showed free chlorine and cyanuric acid was low, and pH and alkalinity were in good range. Will check again after pump has ran for another day. 


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## Lumberman (Sep 27, 2010)

White Cloudy haze is most likely just a bacteria bloom.

Just keep the chlorine up until it’s completely gone then you should be good. The chlorine will kill the bacteria and the filter will pull it out of the water. 

Adding any additional chemicals to your pool water can be a tricky game. If you really want to try and dial it in you can get your Alkalinity and PH levels to the optimum levels which will in turn make the pool easier to maintain. 

All the other nonsense pool stores sell us just that nonsense.


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## MEL (Jul 17, 2005)

I use some copper sulfate to clear it up. I use Rooter root killer in a yellow plastic bottle from ace hardware. I’ll use a couple tsps of it and run the filter.
or you can get it from a pool supply store, perhaps even meijer s, Walmart. But it will be in a bottle with deep blue liquid and normally called clarifier.
it’s cheaper from as a root killer.


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## usedtobeayooper (Feb 13, 2008)

I used to use all sorts of different "chemicals", etc., for years... chasing one parameter at the detriment of another... back and forth. I always had clear-ish water, but what a pain.

I went to the simple solution of ONLY using liquid bleach/shock, absolutely nothing else, and NEVER have any issues in our pool anymore. FC, CC, PH, TA, CH, CYA... always right on the money. I know it sounds like you're using a chlorine generator (salt system), but do some reading here. Everybody that ever comes to our house comments on how ridiculously clear our pool is. 





__





Forum list







www.troublefreepool.com


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## jjlrrw (May 1, 2006)

I agree with a few replies here already, first few years we tried to keep everything in check PH, hardness ect, was a pain and expensive, every time I got in trouble and took a water samples in I walked out with $100 worth of chemicals and it took a good week to get it under control. When closing for the year same thing, $100 for a closing kit. I gave up on testing except for chlorine and visual, if the water was clear called it good. For closing and opening I started to only use chlorine and shock a heavy load just prior to closing then again at opening, learned to close late in the year and open early to keep from anything growing with the cover on cheaper to run the pump a few hours than buying extra chemicals. The past 8 years the pool was crystal clear as long as we didn't let the chlorine pucks run out and used shock on a regular schedule usually after a weekend of high use like Sunday night so it would be okay to use again Monday afternoon. I remember once the pool was clear we let our guard down and forgot about checking for chlorine and applying shock and it seemed like one day the water looked great the next morning green and got worst then it would take a good week to get it back clear. 

Enjoy the pool, I don't miss ours much but we did enjoy when the kids were home growing up lots of fun. We picked up a couple of the littletikes basketball hoops and a few balls, a volleyball net and beach ball all proved to be fun.


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## MEL (Jul 17, 2005)

usedtobeayooper said:


> I used to use all sorts of different "chemicals", etc., for years... chasing one parameter at the detriment of another... back and forth. I always had clear-ish water, but what a pain.
> 
> I went to the simple solution of ONLY using liquid bleach/shock, absolutely nothing else, and NEVER have any issues in our pool anymore. FC, CC, PH, TA, CH, CYA... always right on the money. I know it sounds like you're using a chlorine generator (salt system), but do some reading here. Everybody that ever comes to our house comments on how ridiculously clear our pool is.
> 
> ...


Im with you there formeryooper. I gave up the testing and strips like 25 years ago. What a pain in the ass! I have three products I use.
1- I use the 3” round chlorine pucks. I buy it in the 100lb pail (cheaper that way). I have several bags of shock and some cooper sulfate.
since we leave the pool unattended when we go on vacati9ns or up to the Gaylord house the pool can turn green. So I shock it, run the filter and backwash it every few hours and that clears all the green after a day or two. But it may stay cloudy so I’ll add two tsps of copper sulfate and that clears it all up. If I don’t ever leave it unattended then all I will need is chlorine. No shock, no copper sulfate.


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## Zkovach1175 (Mar 29, 2017)

d_rek said:


> Thanks. Ran the pump and salt unit all night last night and cleared up considerably - I can see the bottom of the pool again!
> 
> I did receive a pH test kit and showed free chlorine and cyanuric acid was low, and pH and alkalinity were in good range. Will check again after pump has ran for another day.
> 
> ...


Also when you first fill the pool it’s good to dump in algecide. We didn’t one year and it was green in 12 hours


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## usedtobeayooper (Feb 13, 2008)

I should clarify: I still test the FC and CC almost daily... or at least routinely throughout the week. If you use strips for testing anything other than the salt content, I would throw them in the garbage and buy a good kit: TF-100 Test Kit ™ 

Beyond the chlorine levels (and salt level in your case) I would also keep a keen eye on the CYA, as it's important to keep that in check... too little and your chlorine will dissipate quickly... too high, and your chlorine becomes less effective, meaning you'll need a much higher FC level to keep your pool clear. I strongly encourage you to read up a bunch on the forum link I sent in an earlier post. Their technique seems time consuming, but once you adapt to it, man does it simplify things. I am not very familiar with salt pools, but for my traditional pool, things got way easier to manage when I learned what the pucks, other agents, etc., were really doing to my water. 

I have not had a green pool a single time since moving to this system 3 years ago. That includes when I open the pool each spring... I close late when water drops into the 50's, and when I open early (before water has a chance to raise above 60) its still crystal clear. 

Everything above being said..... I can't wait until my kids grow out of it and I can get rid of it.


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## d_rek (Nov 6, 2013)

usedtobeayooper said:


> I should clarify: I still test the FC and CC almost daily... or at least routinely throughout the week. If you use strips for testing anything other than the salt content, I would throw them in the garbage and buy a good kit: TF-100 Test Kit ™
> 
> Beyond the chlorine levels (and salt level in your case) I would also keep a keen eye on the CYA, as it's important to keep that in check... too little and your chlorine will dissipate quickly... too high, and your chlorine becomes less effective, meaning you'll need a much higher FC level to keep your pool clear. I strongly encourage you to read up a bunch on the forum link I sent in an earlier post. Their technique seems time consuming, but once you adapt to it, man does it simplify things. I am not very familiar with salt pools, but for my traditional pool, things got way easier to manage when I learned what the pucks, other agents, etc., were really doing to my water.
> 
> ...


Thanks. It's pretty clear today - not crystal, but almost there. My understanding is that the salt system ionizes the salt in the water to create chlorine, and the chlorine then cleans the water. The only other chemical the manufacturer mentions adding is cyanuric acid after the water has become clear.

I tested using the included test strips (cheap paper things) and it was showing just about everything was low except calcium which was at bottom end of OK. Sound like I probably just need to dump some chlorine in there along with a few other things to get it into acceptable ranges.


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## usedtobeayooper (Feb 13, 2008)

If the water is comfortable once everything else is dialed in, you can pretty much ignore the water hardness / calcium with an vinyl aboveground pool unless you’re near the far end of the scale either way… say under 100 or over 400-500. That really comes into play more with a plaster pool, or if you start to develop scale on any of your equipment.

As for CYA, I’d recommend following the below chart for your target CYA and FC levels. Keeping in mind that lower CYA’s allow you to get away with lower free chlorine (FC) levels. As long as you never let your FC drop below the minimum for a given CYA, you shouldn’t have any issues with algae.












And again, I believe the salt test strips are OK, but I'd throw away the ones for testing just about everything else. They are notoriously inaccurate compared to "real" tests.


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## jiggin is livin (Jan 7, 2011)

My biggest go to’s are the shock kits and the CYA. It allows chlorine levels to stay in a good range without being destroyed by the sun. The shock kits are sold in smaller packages and usually get everything dialed right in. We just had ours filled Saturday and I had it dialed in within about 20 minutes. Just added everything and let it go til Sunday morning. The temp came up 15 degrees and all levels were good. I don’t have a saline unit though. Just use the pucks and make sure my CYA is good. My pump has a built in timer for 2-12 hours so I set it to run at night for about 6 hours is what I figured out I can get away with without the pool running away on me. Backwash it every couple weeks when the gauge tells me I need to. Sometimes more if I vacuum it out. 

I always hear horror stories about pools, but I haven’t encountered any of them personally. 

Another thing worth its weight in gold is a “liquid solar cover”. You add like an ounce to every 5000 gallons and it basically stops evaporation. Then you’re not pumping in well water all the time. That’s where things will run away on you. If you can avoid that all you have to do is throw a puck in the floating chlorine deal every now and again. I add one when the current one starts getting small. Don’t let out run out. Mine is the same size pool as yours.


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## usedtobeayooper (Feb 13, 2008)

jiggin is livin said:


> My biggest go to’s are the shock kits and the CYA. It allows chlorine levels to stay in a good range without being destroyed by the sun. The shock kits are sold in smaller packages and usually get everything dialed right in. We just had ours filled Saturday and I had it dialed in within about 20 minutes. Just added everything and let it go til Sunday morning. The temp came up 15 degrees and all levels were good. I don’t have a saline unit though. Just use the pucks and make sure my CYA is good. My pump has a built in timer for 2-12 hours so I set it to run at night for about 6 hours is what I figured out I can get away with without the pool running away on me. Backwash it every couple weeks when the gauge tells me I need to. Sometimes more if I vacuum it out.
> 
> I always hear horror stories about pools, but I haven’t encountered any of them personally.
> 
> Another thing worth its weight in gold is a “liquid solar cover”. You add like an ounce to every 5000 gallons and it basically stops evaporation. Then you’re not pumping in well water all the time. That’s where things will run away on you. If you can avoid that all you have to do is throw a puck in the floating chlorine deal every now and again. I add one when the current one starts getting small. Don’t let out run out. Mine is the same size pool as yours.



One caution for using pucks, is that for every normal size puck (8 oz) you use, you’re adding about 3 ppm of CYA per 10,000 gallons of pool water (approx). i.e., after 3 pucks have dissolved over a few weeks, your CYA would be nearly 10 ppm higher in that size pool… which means your min safe free chlorine level (FC) has to be raised accordingly. 

Not a big deal if your CYA starts low enough in the spring and you drain every season, as you can simply increase your FC as the summer goes on, but if you retain your water year over year, you’ll continually be driving up your CYA with no easy method of reducing it. The only real way to bring the CYA back down is to drain water and replace. Otherwise, CYA levels are very stable if you aren’t adding products like trichlor and dichlor (pucks) that continually raise it.

A CYA change from 40 to 50… or 50 to 60… isn’t a huge deal, but if you keep raising it week after week, that number will keep climbing towards 100 over time, which is when things will begin to get much harder to manage. You’ll begin to need ALOT of Free Chlorine to keep your FC/CYA ratio from getting out of whack, and once your FC falls below the minimum safe level, that’s when you start to see your CC increase, which is bad. It is important to quickly react anytime your CC registers anything above 0.

I do not use pucks, except when I'm heading on vacation. In that case, I simply raise my FC significantly with liquid chlorine (shock), and add a puck or two to a floater for the week. I remove the pucks immediately when I get back home to minimize my CYA increase.


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## jiggin is livin (Jan 7, 2011)

usedtobeayooper said:


> One caution for using pucks, is that for every normal size puck (8 oz) you use, you’re adding about 3 ppm of CYA per 10,000 gallons of pool water (approx). i.e., after 3 pucks have dissolved over a few weeks, your CYA would be nearly 10 ppm higher in that size pool… which means your min safe free chlorine level (FC) has to be raised accordingly.
> 
> Not a big deal if your CYA starts low enough in the spring and you drain every season, as you can simply increase your FC as the summer goes on, but if you retain your water year over year, you’ll continually be driving up your CYA with no easy method of reducing it. The only real way to bring the CYA back down is to drain water and replace. Otherwise, CYA levels are very stable if you aren’t adding products like trichlor and dichlor (pucks) that continually raise it.
> 
> ...


We drain and fill every year. Good to know though going forward if we ever decide to retain it.


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## Big Frank 25 (Feb 21, 2002)

Our pool is calling for 33 lbs. of baking soda. Well most likely need to lower the PH currently at 7, afterwards. 
10.25 lbs. Calcium Chloride. 
CYA is at 66.


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