with a bunch of travel and not paying a lot of attention, the pool's gone green. im going to have a cleaning priced and weekly service fee quoted. any of yall use a service? wondering what your bills look like. mine's a 30k gallon chlorine pool. thanks!

You really don't need a cleaning service unless you just don't have the time, energy or ability to do it yourself. Then again if that is the case then you probably don't need a pool.

Regular brushing of your pool and a proper chemical balance will keep you golden...I mean blue.


Buy a good test kit and regularly test your water. Anyone who has taken a jr high level science class can figure it out. Seriously it is so easy.

When in doubt about what to do consult a local store like TexSun or Leslies. They will give you advice and of course try to sell you the necessary chemicals to treat your pool.

**DO NOT SKIMP ON CHEMICALS TO SAVE MONEY**
This pretty much always will cost you more in the long run.

Did I mention brushing the pool?

Regulary check your skimmer baskets and remove debris. This will allow better flow to your filters.

Check your filters and regularly backwash.

Oh and brush the damn pool.

If you really need someone to make a quick fix and/or do regular services though I do have several friends who are still in the pool business. What side of town are you on?

i should have tagguy-protected my post. yes, i know all that. but when you suspect your DE filter has a tear in it and you dont have the requisite 4 hours to set aside for the uninterrupted footballfcking a filter rebuild entails, things get out of hand.

thx for the follow up response - we're near the med center. its a 30k chlorine. butchers is coming out to quote the cleaning and monthly service. they've done a couple fixes for me in the past and have been really reasonable. i just have no idea what to expect with regard to monthly service. they did quote $100/hr for the cleaning.

$100/hr? Yikes! I'll continue to handle my own

Put a bunch of shock in it

just got an over the phone quote for a "green to clean" for $450-500. that's a guy coming out for 6-7 days in a row. doesnt seem THAT crazy...

I use to work in aquatics. Also missed the part about you traveling recently.

But I'd be more than happy to recommend a friend of mine who has worked with pools for a long time. I know he is out of Humble and I'm not sure how far he travels but I've known the guy for a while and would not hesitate recommending him and his work. No clue on his prices though.

TruBlu Pool Service. You can find his business on Facebook. He has quite a few before and after pictures on there.

I believe his number is 832-878-2319

Annnd I just looked. Seems like he only serves Humble, Kingwood and Atascocita. Sorry about that.

Go to Leslie's and buy this. You will also need about 6 lbs of shock. Should clear it up.

If you are ever up in the Spring/Cypress area I am pretty sure I have a few quarts of algaecide still laying around.

We've had Sweetwater Pools come do some quick cleans before and they are reasonable and good. They also quoted us $180/mo for a weekly cleaning with chemicals. That's a pretty good deal that I may take now that the motivation to keep the pool up is gone for the season.

We've also used David's and they usually charge about $100 for about an hour and a half. But hide all your chemicals if they come. If you have something on hand, they will use it. All of it.

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But hide all your chemicals if they come. If you have something on hand, they will use it. All of it.

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This!

save your money, go to troublefreepool.com

http://www.poolsolutions.com/gd/the-BBB-method-of-swimming-pool-care.html

As mentioned already, I would recommend heading over to Trouble free Pool. I just bought a house w/ pool 3 months ago and have been learning the ropes on the trouble free method which is essentially manually dosing with liquid chlorine and not using any of the crap they sell at Leslie's. I have now completely moved away from 3" tabs and use liquid chlorine...I haven't had to "shock" the pool or add any chemicals for over 2 months now, I just maintain a proper chlorine level with liquid bleach based on the CYA level of the pool.

Since your pool is green more than likely your chlorine level is way of out whack. MY guess is you have been using chlorine tabs which has put your CYA level over the top and essentially made your chlorine less effective, this is the primary drawback to the 3" chlorine tabs and over time is not sustainable and will lead to issues that require expensive chemicals or starting over due to algae buildup.

My recommendation

- Buy TF-100 test kit. This will allow you to accurately measure chlorine to 0.5 ppm and determine your CYA level. Do you have any test results that you can provide?
- SLAM the pool. This is essentially raising your chlorine to the proper level and MAINTAINING to kill all active algea in the pool. I did this and it was a 4 day process of running the pump 100% and adding bleach every day. Throwing a bunch of shock in the pool is not going to get you there and only going to cause other issues (like raising your CYA or hardness). You are done once your pool is clear, and you drop less than 1.0ppm of chlorine overnight (this indicates there is not a significant amount of microorganisms in the pool to cause algae and consume chlorine). SLAM process at link below:
http://www.troublefreepool.com/content/125-slam-shock-level-and-maintain-shockingl

- Once done you let your chlorine level drift down to target level based on your CYA. Chart at link below provides guidance. You could go back to 3" tabs but I would recommend you seriously consider switching to liquid chlorine as it will give you a "trouble free" pool. You can either manually add the liquid chlorine daily or get an automated feeder or salt system.
http://www.troublefreepool.com/content/128-chlorine-cya-chart-slam-shock

Just for reference....During the SLAM I used about 4 jugs chlorine at $3.99 a jug and performed daily brushing. The pool cleared up quick and has now been perfect for over 2 months. WAAAYY cheaper than the 4-500 you are being quoted.

I would also like to add the Leslies/Texsun will not give you any of this advice and will not mention anything about CYA/chlorine relationship....their business model is all about the pucks and shock which take your CYA sky high and then sell you other more expensive chemicals (e.g. phosphate free!) to battle issues since your chlorine has become less effective.

Never used a service. I just shocked and used chlorine to clear "the green." Kept pH right. Run your pump longer to filter the water, backwash or clean the filter as needed.

met w 2 different folks today. both are $200/mo for ongoing service. the current diagnosis is CYA off the charts - need to drain it. the drain/clean/stabilize will be $300 + my water bill.

It's up to you, if you want to pay someone to do it, but you can do it easily with some store bought bleach, muriatic acid and a pool brush.

Run you filter pump continously for four days. Pour enough bleach in on day one to shock the pool. Maybe four gallons? Add acid to keep your ph in a good range. I assume you have a basic test kit. Brush the pool daily, and add a gallon of bleach daily. You'll have a clear pool in four days.

It only cost me about $150 when I had to drain my pool and refill.the BBB method is great if you have the time to to check everything daily, I do not, so the tabs provide a much easier solution, just have to control the CYA every 1-2yrs. I'm ok with that.

Troublefreepools.com!! Got me on the right path over a year ago. My pool and it's maintenance haven't been the same since.

After learning about the basic chemistry, I will NEVER trust the pool stores again, I buy my liquid bleach (higher concentration than most regular store bleach) and acid from them, and that's it.

you'll only have to do daily checks during the period of cleaning up the green. otherwise the tfp method is pretty basic and not time intensive.

If I had the time and you were a little closer I'd just come by and give you a hand.

This is all pretty easy stuff.


Regular partial water changes are the best way to get CYA under control. I would hesitate removing too much because it can be your friend in the winter months. You want some in there because that is what helps keep the chlorine in the pool. Too little and you'll burn through chlorine super fast and it won't even do any good. Too much....well you see what happens when there is too much. Algae loves it.

Tablets have CYA in them to help keep the chlorine in the pool when they dissolve. People usually do not change water often enough in pools so it can build up easily.



So right now you have a green pool....easy to change that.


I would start by getting a full test on your pool. Actually post up your numbers if you have them.

Next step brushing. Go brush your whole pool. I always liked brushing before treating. It just seems to make things work a hair better and faster.

Then backwash time. Depending on how your CYA level (I'm assuming over 100) I would backwash a fair bit. You can do this over a few days. Backwash a few thousand gallons, fill, brush, backwash, fill, brush...etc. This way all the algae that gets brushed off and sucked up into the filter gets washed out into the sewer. You'll be removing the junk and CYA.

After that and once you have gotten your CYA to an acceptable level it is chemical time. Depending on what your CL and pH are showing you may need to add a variety of things. I'm going to assume that you are not going to use your pool for a while. So hitting it a bit aggressively right now to make sure everything will be good should be easy.

Drop your pH to around 7.3-7.4. This will help with everything without eating away at your pool too much. If you can get liquid chlorine then that'll help out tremendously. It isn't cheap but man it is effective. Depending on your CL level at this point I would say on the conservative side add 1 gallon of liquid bleach, 1 pound of granular shock and an algaecide and assuming you have good circulation your pool should be blue by the next day at the latest. If your chlorine level is really low then you can bump up those amounts.

Let everything set for an hour or two and then of course follow it up with.....another brushing.




Did I mention to brush?





Really though good luck. Let me know if that works for you. I can always go look up exact figures and measurements for you if I dig up my CPO book. Not sure where I put it but I can look for it when I get back in town Monday if you need it.

This is also a big help:
Pool Calculator

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Regular partial water changes are the best way to get CYA under control.

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Is this practice recommended as a part of normal care, or just when you have a bad algae bloom.

A little background..... we moved into our Spring area house a few years back, and we had a pool put in at the same time. The first two years I had some very minor algae issues in the Spring and Fall...hardly any in the heat of the Summer. This year has been more of struggle. Never had any greenish water, but I did spend a lot more time this Summer brushing the pool, and I used a lot more shock than previous seasons.

Up till now I've just used the traditional testing kit that came from the pool builders, but I'm thinking about the method that y'all have described on TroubleFreePool.

Do any pool service companies use this method? I plan on continuing to maintain it myself, but it would be good to know about one in case I'm traveling for extended periods of time or if I have questions.

I wouldn't think many follow tfp. it probably wouldn't be that lucrative to them as basic as it is.