J.W.Green Swimming Pools Ltd.

How to cure an algae ridden pool, prevention is better than a solution, if you keep your pool dosed correctly you will never have this problem. Although heat waves, heavy rain and prolonged hot & humid weather conditions may contribute towards pool treatment products being ‘burned’ off quicker than usual thus allowing algae to breed and multiply quickly,  many pools have been reported to change colour overnight.

To prevent your pool from algae infestation add a long term algaecide at the begining of the season,  dose your pool on a weekly basis as per usual, if the weather forecast for the week ahead is warmer than normal or excess rainfall is expected it is wise to raise the dosage for the forthcoming week by 15%-20%.

If your pool is already green, don’t panic. Don’t waste chemicals trying to raise the levels using stabilised chlorine as this will not kill the algae already present in the water. You need to ‘shock’  dose the pool using a higher concentrate of un-stabilised chlorine. This can be achieved using either sodium hypo-chlorite for heavy algal growth or smaller size pools and less dominant growth can be treated using a shock pot. Unstabilised chlorine goes to work straight away on algae, usually giving a good result within twenty four hours.

If after shocking the pool water remains cloudy you may need to add flocculant to sink the remaining dead algae to the bottom of the pool for vacuuming to waste. Before flocking always remember to balance the pH. … if the water is not balanced correctly the flocculant may fail to work.

All that remains is to vacuum the algae to waste, once finished ensure you backwash & rinse your filter thoroughly.

If you require advice  on any of the points above please drop us an email and we’ll do our best to answer any questions.