Good afternoon and Happy Wednesday.
I am still recovering from the long holiday weekend, so this morning I was too tired to bother getting up earlier than I have to. As a result, I didn’t have a morning smoke, so I have nothing to talk about there.
Since it is that time of year I figured I would talk swimming pools..
We pulled the cover off of our above ground pool last Friday, and of course we were greeted by swampy green water. This was no surprise since we had found out a family of frogs had been hanging around the pool before we opened it..
The first few years we were here the pool was great and an easy keeper. We always dealt with some algae when we opened, and maybe a slight case once or twice through the year. However, a couple pounds of shock and running the pump always did the trick. However, last year (and I think the second half of the year before) was just a disaster.
It started out with some issues with metals causing the water to be greenish brown. That was the year before last and it took a bit to resolve. Last year, however, we were plagued with algae. We fought it off for the start of the season, but it took effort. By the second half of the season we could not clear it up. We eventually took our water to get tested and were told to add 5 pounds of shock. We had to double that to get it clear and it only stayed clear for about 2 weeks before it came back. We just gave up hope and covered it early.
This year I tried to get a jump on it and did some research. I ended up buying some powerful shock, clarifier, metal remover, and algaecide (along with the typical chlorine tab bucket) and went at it with a plan. Almost a week, a series of chemical treatments, and 12 pounds of shock later, we are still green… I am hopeful that my last round of shock killed all the algae as, for the first time, I could still smell chlorine after a day.
I am hoping that the green is a result of algae suspension in the water, and possibly some metal oxidation since we do have hard well water. Today more metal remover was added and I am getting some more test strips and adding more clarifier this evening. We shall see…
Take care,
-Trevor