From Green to Clean

A worked example of how a pool that was left over winter with no winterising chemicals was brought back to life with chemicals and filtering.

Day One: The photos upleft and upright show this pool upon taking off the debris cover after a winter. The pool is full of algae and very green, the walls have algea growing on them. You can just about see the bottom of the pool. The pool has a generous amount of shock chlorine added to it, in this case about 2kg into 26,000 gallons.(see note 2 below)

Day Two: After just 24 hours the algae is starting to die and the pool is turning more grey than green. Now that the floor is easier to see most of the leaves on the bottom are scooped up with the deep bag leaf net. There is still algae on the walls and floor though so it is brushed off into the water. The pump is on and the water is being filtered constantly with floc tabs having been deployed.

Day Four: The algae in the water is dead. All the chlorine having been used up some more is added. The filter is taking out the dead algae. There is still a lot of dead algae on the floor. The floor is vacuumed and the automatic cleaner (in this case a Polaris 180) is deployed to get the dust up off the floor into the water where the filter can get it. It also gets the last of the leaves up. By now it has been backwashed three times and new floc tabs added.

Day Seven: A week later and after more backwashes and floc tabs the water is looking much better. The pool has had algicide added. The dust on the floor still has to be removed but the walls are clean.

Day Nine: Nearly there. One more set of floc tabs has the water nearly cystal clear you can see the mosaics on the floor clearly. Just the dust on the floor to get up now

Since this article was posted Perfectly Clear natural clarifier has come on the market and we would use double or triple dose of that instead of floc tabs now.

Note 2: The dosage on the packet for Shock Chlorine is for general shocking for clearing up chloramines etc. When getting rid of algae infestation you need to double or triple the dose.