Oh, dear. I left my pool for two days without skimming and replacing the chlorine tablets, and I came home to — a pool that is the color of Oscar-The Grouch’s skin. Not good. Why did this happen? Well, I can hazard a guess at the fact that my next-door neighbor’s tree just shed a huge branch, and suddenly my pool has more sun on it than it ever got before. You see, green algae loves sunlight. But more than that, not skimming or vacuuming gave the little critters something more, nutrients in the water to feed off of, too.
So what to do? First of all, don’t panic. I tried not to, sort of unsuccessfully. Start by skimming all the leaves and large insects. Then clean your filter, (yes, take it out and wash it off, and rinse it well), then get out your pool vacuum, and get as much of that evil green gunk off the bottom of your pool. Clean your filter again. Replace, rest time.
While you’re resting, you can check the chlorine, pH, and total alkalinity of your pool water. A test kit can be gotten at any pool store, for $30 or less. Don’t bother with the test strips because they can go bad ‘” get the one with the little dropper bottles. Read the instructions. It’s as easy as putting a few drops of some unidentified cancer-causing liquid into the testing vials, covering them, and shaking them up. Clue: don’t drink it.
Once you’ve determined what you need (in my case, lots of chlorine and a rise in the total parts per million of my total alkalinity). My pH was 7.2, the natural pH of my local water. Until I adjust the alkalinity (with special buffering powder, also available at pool stores) I will not have to mess with the pH, but I keep testing it nevertheless to make sure that it’s not too low. Adding buffering solution every 4 hours, I keep testing until I’ve reached a nice balance: 60 to 80 ppm, with a pH of 7.4. Not bad. You’ll probably have to do the same or similar, based on your readings.Once again, don’t panic, most test kits have directions on how to cure just about anything.
Tomorrow I’ll be cleaning my filter (ugh, it’s green) skimming and vacuuming the pool again, just to make sure that all those little green critters are gone. All in all, it’s really a two-day process. One of the reasons for that is to make sure that your water remains stable, and doesn’t fluctuate all over the place. The other is that depending upon your pool pump the water should be filtered many times over in a day, pulling much more of the algae out of it. Come to think of it, I may clean my filter today rather than tomorrow to give it more of a fighting chance of getting more algae out!
Finally, if all else fails, and you’re really miserable and need an algae-free pool, there is a powder that you can buy that will kill it all. Just remember, anything that you put in the pool is a chemical, and you really want as little chemicals against your skin and in your eyes as possible. It’s a big waste of water, but I’ve seen it where it got so bad that starting over, with a clean pool was the only option. Well, good luck and good swimming!
