When a swimming pool has gone green over winter or it has turned green during heavy use, you need your swimming pool back in action.

First things first! HOW GREEN is the pool?

I know that sounds like a daft question, but establishing how bad things actually are is important to deciding how to tackle the job, wasting as little water as possible.

	1. This is a slightly green pool and should be brought back quickly with correct use of chemicals and filtration.
	2. This is a very green pool that has been neglected over winter, although it looks bad there is very little debris.
	3. If your pool looks like this, best to get in some big game hunters. Dont worry, it can still be saved. Just needs more work.

Slightly Green Pool

We will call the pool slightly green if the water is a lime green and we can still make out the bottom of the pool. This can be the easiest one to fix. The first step is to take a reading of the chemicals. You are looking for a test reading of min 1.2ppm and max 3.0 for chlorine and a reading of around 7.2 for pH.

If the test reading shows that chlorine is very low or zero

1. Add chlorine granules (probably around 1kg for an 8x4 pool), retest after the chlorine has dissolved.
2. Adjust pH level, this balances the water to make it harder for algae to grow and ensures that it is safe for bathers.
3. Run filter for 24 hours.

If the test shows that there is chlorine present, this means that there is not enough "free chlorine", to sanitise the water.

1. Check & Adjust pH level as above.
2. Use a propriety shock treatment such as RapiChlor (powdered unstabilsed chlorine) or Superchlorinate with unstabilised liquid chlorine.
3. Run filter for 24 hours

Both of the actions recommended above would probably benefit from addition of a floculant sache, to assist the filter. Ensure that the filter is adequately backwashed. Do not swim in the pool until the chemical levels have been checked!

Very Green Pool

We will call the pool very green, if the water is a deep green, the bottom is not visible and there is some debris and mosquito larvae. It assumed that the pool may have been neglected for a few months.