suddenly cloudy water

[sneldred1]

Hi, I'm new here but have been lurking for a few months. I have suddenly got cloudy pool water. I can still see the bottom, but it is not crystal clear. The kids also say it tastes funny. I have not changed anything recently but 1 1/2 weeks ago I put in copper out (green hair!) and a lot of calcium carbonate. Then some alkilinity plus. All the parameters on my test stick are within normal range. I have ordered the Taylor K-2005 kit but it won't get here for about a week. The water became cloudy about 2 days ago. It is an in-ground grecian 24 x 36 approx 30,000 gals. And has a heater which we heat to around 80 degrees. Before this it was sparkling clear. We have had some rain and cool weather a few days before turning cloudy, and we had the solar cover on. I backwashed and will be vacuuming today in case it is organic debris; there are a few leaves in the bottom. I do not like taking the water to the pool store, they always tell me I have to add something which is nearly $100 each time! I only took it in this time because I needed to quantify the copper.

Should I maybe shock it? I had to let the chlorine go down to 1 ppm to add the copper out. Maybe I got some algae growth.

Thanks for any help!

[Backglass]

I would say YES on the shock. Rain & weather can blow all sorts of lovely things into your pool and if your chlorine levels were low, BOOM! Cloudiness.

You will have a MUCH better handle on whats going on when your kit arrives.

[sneldred1]

OK, shocked it today and now even cloudier! Well, I will let it go until tomorrow, and I will vacuum and backwash, check levels etc. Ran out of time today. They shipped my kit

Does anybody know if the copper test strips are any good? I didn't know they had those until I was searching for the Taylor kit. We have kind of high copper in our well water and periodically combat green hair syndrome!

[Pool User]

Got my test kit today. Quite a bit more involved than the test strip! My chlorine levels are high because I shocked, ph is 7.2, TA is 70 ppm, CH 225 and CYA is 110. Are these accurate with the chlorine level so high though? It is slowly clearing up since the shock. Will keep backwashing and running filter 24/7 and see how it goes.

[Backglass]

Got my test kit today. Quite a bit more involved than the test strip! My chlorine levels are high because I shocked, ph is 7.2, TA is 70 ppm, CH 225 and CYA is 110. Are these accurate with the chlorine level so high though? It is slowly clearing up since the shock. Will keep backwashing and running filter 24/7 and see how it goes.

Excellent! Yes the kit is more involved, but VERY accurate. No more pool stores and guesswork or you!

Your chemistry isn't bad...the only thing I see right off the bat is that your CYA is double what it should be (50 max). You should start diluting your water to bring it down (drain a foot or two of water and refill with fresh) and stop using anything with CYA in it (pucks, stabilized chlorine, etc).

The fact that your chlorine levels are really high is why it is clearing. You needed the extra boost to overcome the high CYA levels. With a CYA of 110 you need a chlorine level of 43 to shock and a level of around 8.0 mninumum, just to stay sanitized. Keep the chlorine high and start diluting and thing will rapidly improve.

[chem geek]

High chlorine levels above 10 ppm will affect the pH test usually making you think the pH is higher than it really is. So generally, you get the pH where you want it before shocking and if you are going to shock with a lot of chlorine you generally lower the pH some first (say, to 7.2 or 7.3) since high chlorine shock levels will make the pH rise (they will drop again when the chlorine gets used up).

I believe that all the other tests will report accurately even at high chlorine levels.