This was something that has been on my to do list for a long time. This is our third summer having a big pool at our house, and after 3 years, I have finally figured it out.
It took sooo much research to figure it out, and honestly is why it failed so badly in past years.
The thing about balancing pools, is it ALL depends on the water you have in your area. Every area is different as far as chemical makeup and minerals. The water where I live is especially hard and full of minerals. We have to deal with issues like scaling, calcification, and mineral deposits. If you live in an area where most people have a water softener in their homes, then we probably have similar water. I am the worst at putting salt into my water softener, but I can definitely tell a difference when I remember to do it.
Materials needed:
- The pool I have.
- Test kit for what chemicals your water has and needs
- Some kind of stabilizer for your PH- either muriatic acid or calcium bisulfate.
- Clear tablets if your PH is low.
- Chlorine (ill talk about a few different options later)
- Pool shock
- A pool net/ skimmer
- Flocculant for a green pool
- A good sand pump.
- Filter Medium- I chose balls
- Pool vacuum
- Possible Extra hoses if you have more than one intake port.
- Plunger Valves for ease of connecting and vacuuming
- T- shaped plunger valve for multiple port control
This project was expensive to figure out. Pools are expensive in general to maintain and upkeep. As a warning if you are looking for a good vinyl pool above ground, just know what you are getting into in terms of expenses and time commitment.
Step 1: Make sure you have the right stuff
This is where most of my issues came from. The pool pump that came with our above ground Coleman pool was garbage. It didn’t circulate the water nearly enough to make any kind of difference. With out circulation, things that fall into the pool, will collect, and grow bacteria. The chemicals also won’t mix in properly, and none of the debris that gets into the pool by swimming, rain etc gets filtered out.
I ended up purchasing the intex sand pump after lots of research. I read that it was powerful, and could really move some water, which is the issue I was having with debris. It was a little tricky to set up, but after looking more closely at the instructions I figured it out.
Since my pool was made by Coleman and not Intex, I had to get creative with the connectors.
The hoses and connectors it originally came with didn’t fit any of the pump fittings. The pump came with 1 1/2 in hoses, and everything I had was 1”. I ended up purchasing some plunger valves with tapered connection points to help with this. I chose these fittings for two reasons.
- It allowed me to use the more sturdy hoses that came with the pump and not have to buy more connectors to make it work on the pump end.
- It allowed me to shut off the water at the port locations.
Previously any time I serviced or rinsed the pump, I had tons of water splashing all over me, and hemorrhaging from the pool. The plunger valve lets you turn it off right by the port, and you can disconnect the hoses without any leaking. I also liked that these valves had a little plastic support elbow on them. It keeps them from sagging, and eventually tearing out the hole on the side of your pool.
Depending on how many intake hoses you have, you could just buy two plunger valves and call it good. My pool had 2 intake hoses, and 1 return hose. I used the plunger valve above for the return port, and then bought a separate one for the intake valves. I opted for the T-shaped plunger valve so that I could connect both intake hoses.
I bring up these valves, because if you are not using an Intex pool, it was very frustrating to get the pump there, and then not be able to connect it until parts showed up 3 days later. I should have researched the connection hose sizes that came with the pump, and looked at my port sizes before ordering. Save yourself the pain, and order these ahead of time if you are not working with an Intex pool.
Another thing I chose to buy was some filter balls. I chose this over sand. Both are rated to last a LONG time, but I had heard that sometimes the sand filters would have issues with sediment settling along the bottom of the pool, and with dirt debris being an issue already, I didn’t want to add sand into the mix. I bought two of these bags, and they worked great! Next, after you have the right gear, it’s time to determine why your water is stilll cloudy even though you are filtering it. I thought the filter might be the cause, but even after running it for 24 hours straight, the water, although much much cleaner, was still cloudy.
Step 2: Determine your issue
My water was green. Like really green. There was algae on the bottom, and sides. Not only was it green, but it was cloudy. You couldn’t see the bottom. I had been trying for weeks to prevent the green by adding pool shock to the water any time I noticed a hit of green. This method didn’t work. Pools need pretty consistent care, and just thinking about them every once in a while when you notice issues is a great way to create bigger problems that are harder to solve quickly.
When I tested my cloudy green water, the PH and Acidity levels were off the charts. I used this pool test kit. I just got it off amazon.
There are a gazillion out there. You just need to make sure whatever kit you buy can show you as least these things. Some of them even have a QR code on back, or a phone number to text to get help with your readings.
Using a dry hand, dip the strip into the water, and try to keep it flat while it processes. Wait however long it says on the back of the bottle before comparing your readings.
This is where I went wrong at first. I would just assume that if it was green it didn’t have enough chlorine. So I would add tablets, and shock, and go crazy with it, trying to clear it up. It did become less green doing this, but the water was REALLY cloudy, and gross looking.
After some research, I learned that this is the order you should fix your pool issues:
-PH levels
-acidity/Alkalinity levels
-chlorine- free and added
Other things like hardness and bromine might not affect your water depending on where you live, but there are ways to address that as well.
I decided to test my water straight out of the tap. It had pretty high PH levels all by itself. I learned that by doings things like shock treatments, I was actually causing something called chlorine lock, because of the calcium hypochlorite that most pool shocks contain. This can lead to really cloudy water, even if it’s not green. The pool water had these readings:
free chlorine :0ppm
chlorine: 0ppm
Cyanuric acid levels: off the charts
PH: off the charts
Alkalinity levels: off the charts
Water hardness: very high
If your PH level is high, the chlorine will not work. You will only add to the problem if you add more chlorine to a pool that is experiencing chlorine lock. When you have chlorine lock another issue is high cyanuric acid levels. This can cause the cloudiness too.
The crappy part was there was no real solution to the high cyanuric acid levels. The only solution to this was to partially drain the pool.
SO that is what I did. Which really sucked since the water had only been in there for about 2 weeks at that point.
I refilled the pool re tested the water. The readings now read:
Free chlorine: 0ppm
Chlorine: 0ppm
Cyrunaric acid: in between 30-50ppm
PH: Just above 7.8-8
Alkalinity: 80
Water hardness: 250
Since the water is mostly just tap water at this point, It was like starting fresh..
Well fresher anyways. It was still pretty cloudy and a little green.
So instead of adding more chlorine shock and doing the same problem again, I started with the PH.
Step 3: Balancing your PH
If your PH levels are in this range:
You should be good to move onto the next step.
If not, let’s fix it first.
If your PH is low: Add soda ash or basically baking soda. This will help to raise the PH level making your other chemicals later more effective.
If your PH is high. Add something like PH down- or sodium bisulfate. This will lower your PH level to a more acceptable range.
Another option to do this, and this is the option I took, is to use muriatic acid. I went this route for two reasons. It was much cheaper that the PH down powder was, AND it was supposed to help with high alkalinity levels. Since I had high PH and akalinity levels, it just made sense.
**Warning this stuff is pretty potent. It is strong smelling, will burn skin and eyes, and is extremely toxic. Also don’t use the same measuring tools, you have used with bleach or chlorine. The mixture of chlorine and muriatic acid actually produces chlorine gas, and is fatal if inhaled too much.
* not a chemist over here by any means, but learned this lesson the hard way. I had been using a cup for my liquid chlorine. I used the same measuring cup for the muriatic acid, and it started to bubble up and react immediately . I was lucky enough to be outside in open air, and just dropped it in the pool where it rinsed and fizzled out. After seeing the reaction, I researched and was a little shook by the results. So ya. Be careful.
The muriatic acid worked like a charm. It brought the PH and acidity levels down to within a normal range.
This take some time.
I added it before any chlorine ( which is the right order) but if you have already added chlorine or shock, you need to wait AT LEAST 4-6 hours before adding the muriatic acid, mostly for all of the reasons I just went over. 4-6 hours lets the chlorine mix in and stabilize enough to have other chemicals be added.
I put it in, and then turned on my pump. I let it filter through for 4-6 hours and came back and re- tested. It put the PH levels in range.
Step 4: Adding your chlorine
What is the difference? Free chlorine vs. Chlorine ppm. I watched this video and it helped.
There are many types of chlorine out there. For years I had been purchasing those little tablets. They are cost effective, and you can add them to a floater basket that allows the chlorine to be distributed over time. For someone like me, who wanted to just check in on the pool every once and while, this seemed like the perfect solution. It might be ok for your water in your area, but it wasn’t for mine.
The issue….. this kind of chlorine contain stabilizers that prevent chlorine from evaporating too quickly in the sun. Chlorine dissipates the most quickly when the water is in the sun, and because of this it should be added at night. These stabilizers although, keeping the chlorine in the pool longer, also can lead to something called chlorine lock.
Google says: Essentially, a chlorine lock means that the chlorine in your pool is not working as it should to sanitize the water. This issue is brought about by the presence of too much cyanuric acid, which can overpower the free chlorine in your pool.
When this happens, the water can become cloudy and unmanageable. So just depending on the type of water you have where you live, tablets may or may not be a good fit for you. Do your homework before buying because it really makes a difference.
I opted to buy liquid chlorine. It is much cheaper that the tablets or powder options, but it does evaporate at an alarming speed. Make sure to read the back to know how many ounces to add for the gallons in your pool. I ended going through about a gallon of chlorine each week. Which Im still not sure if that was enough. I was constantly trying to get the readings up to a stable level, and they were always too low.
Step 5: Flocculant
So after I added all of these different chemicals, and got everything, balanced, I still had quite a bit of cloudiness. This was because there was algae in the water still. So, although my pH levels, chlorine levels, acid levels, and hardness levels were balanced, the water was still cloudy. Time to add a flocculant. I added this flocculant.
A flocculant will it bind all of the algae particles together and drop them to the bottom of the pool. This makes it easier to vacuum out.
I bought this vacuum.
It connected to my sand pump filter easily to help with removal. I had to rig a little bit of an adapter for my ports on my pool because my pool is not an Intex brand, but overall I think it worked just fine. Make sure that you set your sand pump filter to waste when vacuuming out, and let it drain away from your pool area to an area that will not cause any flooding.
I spent quite a few hours after all of the algae particles have dropped to the bottom of the pool, vacuuming it out. You have to go very slowly. Otherwise, the particles get stirred up and will actually just make the water cloudy again. I would do a pass, wait and let it all settle to the bottom of the pool again. Then I would vacuum again.
I did this a total of three times.
It was exhausting and very time consuming, but it worked. All of the algae was removed and I had completely clear sparkling water. I forgot to take photos of this process, but it was long, tedious, and worth it
Step 6: Maintenance
This is arguably the hardest part. Remembering to add the chlorine daily for me was the part I struggled with the most. Since liquid chlorine evaporates so fast, I needed to add it to the water daily. I noticed that the algae growth would start after just a day of missed chlorine. Chlorine levels really are the key to keeping a pool looking sparkling and algae free. Most systems recommend a weekly pool shock. Make sure to test before doing so.
Also be sure to run your pool pump each night. Adding chlorine at night will help prevent such quick evaporation, and allows the pump to circulate it overnight.
Also use a pool skimmer net to remove debris daily. Adding something like a pool cover can help cut down on the amount of debris that flies into your pool over the course of a day, and especially during wind and rain storms.
I’m sure that there are systems out there to help deliver chlorine at a more consistent rate and to help with management, but since I was using liquid chlorine instead of tablets, this is some thing I just had to keep doing manually.
And that’s it.
It took a long time to figure out my personal water issues and balance, and fix them but I am so happy to say that with the right tools I finally did it. It isn’t perfect and I still get debris at the bottom. BUT I can see the bottom. It also stayed clear for more than a couple of days this time. I kept it clear for the rest of the summer! I am confident next year it will be clear the whole summer instead.
Overall, it was quite an investment to be able to get it to be this clear, but I am hoping that it will be an investment into the future summers for my children.
As a bonus, the filter balls that are in the sand filter are washable and I’m able to reuse them for quite a while. If you choose to use sand instead of filter balls, it says it is good for up to five years in there. So either way, it’s a very affordable option for the long term.
Drop any questions in the comments below, and let me know if you have tried to balance your pool water yourself too. It’s not for the faint of heart but it’s so satisfying to complete.
Thanks for being here.
Amanda.