Clearing Up a Green Above Ground Pool

something I've seen here in the last four or five years that people are having major issues with is constantly customers or customers are calling me they're saying our pools green we've put $350 in this thing it's been six months and my pool still green that should not be happening and let me tell you why that probably is happening the biggest issue I see with this is people are their pools green they're taking it to a local pool company and the pool company is testing their water with an electronic system which is very accurate they're very good but here's the deal the electronic system you know even when I used to work in a pool store years ago and I tested water there's no test that you can do for algae you can't test the water for algae you basically look at the customer and you go how does your pool look is it green yes then you have algae in it is it clear no then you don't have algae but you can't test that and an electronic test is not going to be able to test that either okay so what's happening is the electronic test is testing your water and it's seeing what your water is lacking chemical wise and it's telling you to put in X amount of chlorine to get your chlorine back to where it's supposed to be but if your pool is green all that contamination is requiring more chlorine to get it to that point and that's why this thing's dragging out for you that's why it's been six months and you can put a whole bunch of chlorine in there over and over and over and over and nothing's happening okay because the tests can't test whether your pools green or not and when it's green you have to make more extreme measures to get this out let me explain it to you this way putting a pound of chlorine in your pool every day for seven days is not near as effective as putting seven pounds of chlorine in your pool at one time let me explain it to you this way if your house was to catch on fire you want what you wouldn't go there and put out the kitchen you know put the fire out in the kitchen and then come back the next day and put the fire out in the living room then come back the next day and put the fire out in the garage that's not what you're going to do that fire is going to reproduce so quickly your house is going to burn to the ground what you would want to do is douse the house with water really quick a whole bunch of water and completely smother the fire out that is exactly what's happening with algae if your pools green it's requiring a certain amount of chlorine to suffocate it to kill the all the algae that's in the pool if you only throw one pound in and come back the next day that algae it's going to kill some of the algae but not all of it and overnight this algae is going to reproduce and your pool is going to look the same when you wake up the next day so the whole idea is is you want to hit it really hard one hard time and if you do that you're going to clear it up okay so here's the trick with it what you're wanting to do is put in three to four times the normal amount of chlorine for instance if you would shock your pool your pool is clear let's say you're on a chlorine level system and you go out and you shock your pool once a week with a one pound of chlorine when your water is clear if your water is green you're going to want to hit this with three or four pounds and at one shot what that's going to do is raise your content your chlorine level higher than then then your contamination level and it's going to smother all your contamination out and it's going to clear your pool up get all the algae out of there and then there's going to be no algae living in your water that can reproduce and your pool is going to start to clear up okay so that's the trick you need to hit it hard and you need to hit it at one time okay like I said seven pounds of chlorine at one shot is hundreds of times more effective than one pound of chlorine every day for seven days now keep this in mind chlorine is a toxic chemical if you're going to put a whole lot of chlorine in your pool at one time you might not be able to swim for a couple days you know basically what's going to happen is let's say in that scenario where you're putting in seven pounds let's say the algae basically is requiring five pounds you put in seven that five pounds is going to get eaten up and and go away because it's getting used up killing your algae you're going to have two pounds of chlorine left in there and some residual chlorine your chlorine level is going to be high you might not be able to swim in the pool for a couple days the best thing to do is try not to let your pool get green okay because a lot of times over chlorinating your pool in this fashion it can fade your liner a little bit it can create some issues it's not something you want to do all the time I'm not telling you let your pool turn green every week and then hammer it with a bunch of chlorine if this happens over and over and over again you're going to end up killing your line or you're going to end up messing up plastic components of the filter system and your skimmer and your return you don't want to do that but if you're in that situation and your pools green for whatever reason this is how you clear it up okay and then once you get it cleared up try to keep this thing clean and try not to let it get green because like I said I'm telling you to basically over chlorinate your pool which is what's going to help you but you don't want to do this all the time you're going to end up you know really fading your liner and destroying components doing it one time doing it two times over the course of a pools life and stuff you're fine it's no big deal but it's not something you want to you don't want to get yourself in this situation five times every season okay now let me walk you through what you're going to experience there's there's very seldom a truth in that your pools green you shock it real hard you wake up the next day and your pool is clear that's not really how it works the process of clearing up a green pool is this it goes from green to cloudy to clear now let me explain to you what why that is first of all you got a bunch of green algae in your pool that's why your water is green algae is a plant it contains a chemical called chlorophyll which is the same chemical that turns plants green what's going to happen is when you shock it you raise your chlorine level real quick it's going to dissolve the cells of the algae and once it breaks down and dissolves that cell it's going to kill it's going to dissolve the chlorophyll within that algae so it's it's going to take away the green color of the pool but when you wake up the next day after giving your pool a good strong shock it's probably not going to be clear it's going to be very cloudy and that's actually a good sign what you want to do is shock that pool and have your water turn cloudy what you want is no green you just want cloudiness the cloudiness is coming from the fact that you still have the algae in the water but it doesn't have any chlorophyll in it so now it's not green but it's still in the water and it's causing it you basically got a bunch of dead algae carcass in your water that's that's causing your water to be cloudy okay now once this cloudiness comes in you can get a flock and it helped clears it up helps it clear up a little quicker a lot of times what I do is I do like flock if you're having a party for the weekend you know you can put in a flock and it'll help clear it up a little bit quicker but usually it once you chlorinate your pool properly to shock it to begin with to kill this algae it's going to turn your pool cloudy but there's going to be enough chlorine in there that over the course of a few days it's going to end up dissolving this algae carcass out and your poll is going to end up clearing up okay so keep in mind that if your pool is green especially extremely green it's going to be a two three four day process until it actually gets clear okay two other things if you have a lot of debris in the pool a lot of leaves pine straw whatever the case may be try to clean that stuff out as good as you can before you shock it because what's going to happen is when you put that shock in you got you know a whole book of the leaves down in the bottom of your pool what the chlorine is going to try to do is it's going to try to eat away those leaves and it's not going to try to eat away the algae it's going to try to get it goes basically to the biggest contamination first so you don't have to get every leaf out of your pool don't break your neck on it but you want to try to get out as much as you possibly can now people go well my pull so green I can't see the bottom well you're going to have to get in there and just move by faith on this thing and try to clear out as much as you can okay once you think you got it to that point now you're ready to shock your pool another thing before you shock your pool make sure your baskets are nice and clean to clear up a green pool you need two things you need chemicals the proper chemicals and enough chlorine to do it and you need good filtration you have to have both of those if you don't have good filtration but you put in a lot of chlorine it's not going to work if you have excellent filtration but you don't put in enough shock it's not going to work you got to have them working hand in hand so what I recommend you do is clean your filter out real good you know if it's cartridge wash it off real good if it's a sand filter backwash it real good then put your chlorine in run your pump for 24 hours a day until your pool is cleared up again if you're not running your pump you're not circulating your water this is a situation where you want to run your pump for 24 hours a day until this thing clears up I also recommend you to clean your filter at least once a day if not twice a day what that's going to do is once you kill this algae it's going to start getting clogged up in your filter it's going to start lowering your pressure and lowering your filtration if you're not getting good filtration it's going to extend how long it's going to take to clear your pool up okay so if you go out there every day and you backwash your filter you do it in the morning before you go to work you even do it when you come home at night you're keeping your filtration at maximum optimization and you're going to end up cleaning up this pool a lot quicker for you okay all right so that's what you need to do now on if your pool is going to turn green

Channel: Above Ground Pros

Views: 714,536

Rating: 4.6948805 out of 5

Keywords: above, ground, swimming, pool, pools, easy, maintenance, tips, 20, help, cleaning, backwash, green, algae, chemical, clear, clearing

Id: uwNFriu26SA

Length: 11min 47sec (707 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 16 2014