All right welcome to swim, university's, emergency pool algae removal plan. Who am i? What who's this voice? That you're listening to my name is Matt Jeff and EC. I'm the founder of some University and some University calm and just a few quick points. One I've been in the pool industry since I was 13 years old.

That's four four! I don't know how many years it's like 20 plus years 21 years or something like that and I've run a couple of stores. I'd ran a service department. I've been teaching pool care for years, even after I stopped working at these pool stores in the Northeast in America. I started some University Swim University.

I am the sole owner of some University. It is a totally unbiased resource for swimming pool care and it's everything that I know about swimming pool care all wrapped up into one site. Currently I have a team of about four people and the four of us run this site. We have no sponsorships, we kind of just do things the way we want to do them and we keep the lights on here.

By do you know running things like this running webinars like this and selling. We have a course. That's called the pool care handbook ebook. It's an e-book and a video course combined and we'll talk more about that at the end.

But what I want to talk about today in this video is how to get rid of algae. This is my proven steps of getting rid of algae. If you have a chlorine pool so quickly we're just going to go over, this is a two-day process and beyond, but there's really just two days of a really intense work that we have to do, and I'm just gon na go over everything right now. So on day, one we're gon na first assess the color of your pool.

There's three different colors we'll go over that then we're going to talk about stocking up on shock and clarifier. These are the two big chemicals that you're gon na need in order to kill, algae and then clear your pool, then we're gon na set we're going to talk about vacuuming to waste and vacuuming. Your pools, you're gon na, have to do this manually and you may not have to do it. We'll have to look at that in a minute but vacuuming any algae buildup, especially if it's the beginning of the year, like vacuum, that directly out of your pool and then we're gon na go into brushing so you're not going to be able to see a lot Of things at the bottom of the pool, while you vacuum it out, so the rest you're just gon na - have to brush off the walls and off the bottom and get everything into suspension so that when we do shock your pool, we can kill everything.

Then you need to test your water to make sure that the pH and alkalinity are correct before we actually do the shocking, which we do at night and then finally, we're just gon na run your filter, 24/7 and then move on to date. So, let's just go step by step through day one if you have algae currently in your pool so on day. One. The first thing we're gon na do is assess the color.

This is good to do during daylight, so you can see the colors not at night. There are three different colors that I sort of identify the first one is teal green. When you look at your pool, it'll look teal now, if you're color blind get somebody to look at your pool for you, because this is gon na determine what how much chemicals were. Gon na actually need in the future.

So you just have to look with your eyes if you have a teal green pool. The second is a dark, green or just green. It just looks very green, not it not a nice, pretty teal color, but like a dark, green color and then finally, we have black. This can be very, very dark green, which is what causes it to be black, but sometimes just looks.

It looks black. So if it's really really bad you'll know it green is pretty much the norm. You'll see that a lot teal means there's not that much algae right and you're on the verge of perhaps getting rid of it. Black means, you have a lot of work to do going forward, so how are we actually going to kill the algae? Well, we're gon na look at two different chemicals and the first one is shock.

Now you might already be asking like. I know, there's something. That's called algaecide algaecide, which we do not talk about in killing. Algae is because algaecide like pesticide is a preventative.

It keeps the algae away, it does not actually kill algae. The only thing that actually kills algae is chlorine and, in this case, we're talking about a high dosage of chlorine in the form of pool shock and specifically that pool shock with an active ingredient called calcium hypochlorite. What you're? What you see here is a one or a dramatization, a cartoon of a one pound or a one bag of calcium hypochlorite shock, and I have 60 % plus because different shocks with with an active ingredient of calcium hypochlorite, come in multiple degrees of you know how Much calcium harness is at or sorry, calcium, hypochlorite is actually in pool shock. I try to do anything above 60 %, so if their active ingredient of Casa of the calcium hypochlorite in the shock that you can buy from your pool, store or online, if it's above 60 %, you're good to go, the other chemical is water, clarifier or pool Clarify or clarify, or whatever it's called it's, it's a blue liquid that we are going to pour into your pool and I'm gon na explain more about how this chemical actually works.

But you're gon na need this, because when we shock the pool, we're gon na kill all of the algae and it's gon na go from a green color to a gray color, which is gon na make your pool incredibly cloudy and the clarifier is gon na help. Your filter system, clear your pool now there's another type of clarifier that we're not going to talk about in this webinar and it's called flock, but i wanted to bring it up because if you go to the pool store and they sell you this as a clarifier, Do not buy it because flock what that's going to do and there's another process of getting rid of algae. This is the best one, but there is a really fast way to get rid of algae. That requires just flock that we talked about on some University dot-com, but I'm not going to recommend it here.

So flock works entirely different. It does not use your filter system to pick up the cloud. It actually drops everything at the bottom of your pool, which is gon na force you to vacuum, that out, which takes forever it's a lot of elbow grease, so we're just gon na ignore that what we want to do is look for pool shock with calcium hypochlorite. The active ingredient above 60 % and a bottle of water clarifier - that's all you're, really gon na need okay.

Well, now we need to talk about how much okay, so with clarifier you pretty much just need the one bottle, but with shock there are like, I said when we talk about assessing the color of the pool that is going to determine how much shock we have So if you have the teal green, the teal pool you're gon na double shock it. If you have a dark green pool, you're going to triple shock it, and if you have a black pool you're going to quadruple shock it now. Let me explain what this means. One bag or one pound of shock is a single shock for a pool that's up to ten thousand gallons.

So we have to do some math here. If we, what you're looking at right now is a representation of a pool that has up to 10,000 gallons. That's a relatively small pool, so if it was a teal pool, I would say you just need two bags of shock. You can just double shock it and the next day you should be cloudy, blue and move on with a dark, green pool.

You would triple shock it now. What happens if you have a twenty thousand gallon pool? Well, if you have a twenty thousand gallon pool, all of this gets doubled, so we're still calling it triple shock, but you're actually going to be using six bags instead of three. So you just have to kind of round up, and let's say, if you're or, if you're, asking yourself well, I have a fifteen thousand gallon pool, or I have a twenty five thousand gallon pool my rule of thumb. There is just to round up to the nearest you know, thousand gallons so free.

So if you have a twenty five thousand gallon pool, for example, I would just call it thirty and gallons, because the more shock the the more effective it's gon na be for you. So that's how you do the math to find out exactly how much shock you need now, if you go to the pool store or if you order online, whichever you do make sure that whatever you need to get rid of algae double, even that, because the chances, If you have a really black pool - and you quadruple shock it the next day, it may not be cloudy blue, which is what we want it to be. It may still be teal and therefore you're gon na have to shock again. So just make sure you have plenty of shock on hand and it won't go the way, go two ways: cuz you're gon na be using this all year anyway, and it'll work even the following year.

So just make sure you have enough shock to kill the algae. So this is just about stocking up we're gon na move on to now actually doing some work on your pool. Your pool is green, so the one thing you can do to kind of make it a little bit easier for the shock to kill everything is to get rid of as much algae as possible manually. This is sort of optional.

You do not have to do this, but if you can, if you don't mind - and you know how to set up your manual vacuum cleaner with a telescopic Pole, your vacuum head and your vacuum hose and if you don't know how to do this, this URL at The bottom here is from university comm, slash vacuum, dash, pool that will show you exactly how to do it, there's actually a video there. It's broken down with images on how to actually vacuum your pool. This other graphic here is a filter system set to waste, and that's what I mean by vacuum: to waste, because you're gon na be pulling algae up from the bottom of your pool with your vacuum and if you, and if you allow that water to go through The filter system - it's just gon na - come right back into your pool because your filter system, no matter what filter you have, is not strong enough or fast enough to filter, really thick green algae. It's just not gon na be able to do it.

So it's all gon na blow back into your pool, but if you just vacuumed directly out of the backwash port, so really it. It just goes right from the bottom of your pool, right out through your backwash hoe, you're, never actually going to touch the filter system, and all of that green is just gon na be removed, just totally removed. And you know, if you can do this for a while and and you're gon na lose water. If you do this, this is gon na happen.

So what I recommend is just adding a garden hose and keeping the water filling up as you're doing it or you can even pre, fill it a little bit higher so that when you start you have enough buffer to the vacuum and you're just gon na. Do this until you get as much up as you think as you have down there once you do this and again totally optional, you don't have to do this. You can skip this if you want to, but this is just gon na help, make your shock more effective because it has less to kill, then we're just gon na brush. Now this is where you know, you're gon na stir up all the algae algae tends to cling to the walls, to the to the stairs to the ladders.

All around your pool on the floor everywhere, so you're gon na take your brush you're gon na put on your top telescopic pull and you're just gon na brush the whole entire pool every surface, the floors, the wall, ladders, everything and just get that pool even greener. Cuz, all of that stuff is just stuck all along the walls, so you're gon na get it all into suspension and the reason that we're gon na do this is because, when we add shock, let me add this: this high amount of chlorine and by the way, If I did, I wasn't clear earlier shock is very very concentrated chlorine. It's really all it is we're gon na add all of this shock to the water and it's going to be able to kill the algae, because the algae is floating in suspension and not attached to your walls or sitting on the bottom of the floor. So that's what we're gon na do there once we've brushed everything up.

I recommend you get the water test it because this is gon na make your shock more effective, but you don't have to go through a full test. You can either do it yourself or you can take it to your local pool store. If they do. You know advanced testing for you or, if you have a good test kit, you really just need to test for two things: we're gon na test for pH, and we want to make sure that the pH is between 7.2 and 7.6.

I would strive to be on the higher side at 7.6 because when you shock you are gon na drop, the pH will drop and then also check your alkalinity and make sure that's between a hundred and a hundred and fifty ppm or parts per million again aiming For the higher side at about a hundred and fifty parts per million, because after you shock, it will go down now there the reason that we're even concerned about this is because, if you have a balanced pool, meaning though the water is not neither acidic or basic, It's sitting, you know at 7.6 and 150 parts per million of alkalinity. Then this shock is gon na, be able to do its job a lot more effectively. So in this case, if you need to add pH and alkalinity, please do that before you shock your pool. Make sure you get a test it and then make sure you add those chemicals in there test it again to make sure that you've hit those marks.

Even if it's a little bit higher, that's okay, but don't go too high, don't go too low. Just kind of stay right in these ranges and you'll be good to go and then it'll be time to shock and we're gon na shock at night to be very clear. So this is a simple graphic on how to shock a pool and I'll explain what each step is. If you're gon na be using calcium hypochlorite shock, that's above sixty percent of its active ingredient, I recommend that you pre dissolve the shock in a bucket of water.

Now you have to be very careful when you do this. I am. This is a full disclaimer that this can be very dangerous, so I recommend that you wear gloves you wear goggles, you wear protective clothing, perhaps clothing that you're not gon na wear out in public anytime soon, because if this water, this diluted, shock water splashes on you, We're talking about a very high concentrated of chlorine, aka bleach, which will turn your clothes instantly white, so you're, gon na add water to a bucket first, preferably warmer water. If you can get warmer water it'll help the shock dissolve a lot easier.

There are versions of calcium hypochlorite shock out there that are quick dissolve, even if they are quick dissolve. I still recommend that you pre dissolve it in a bucket of lukewarm to warm water and then that'll help to disperse the shock, the chemical throughout the water as best as possible, so you're gon na get CREP get a bucket, fill it with water, again luke or Warmer you're gon na slowly add the shock to the bucket of water. So you always add chemical to water, not the other way around. Don't do not add shock to a bucket and then add water.

It causes splashing. It could splash up on you again, wear gloves. Wear protective eyewear, goggles, wear protective clothing that you don't particularly care about once the shock is in the bucket one bag at a time per five-gallon bucket by the way, so we want a lot of water. We want one bag so this! So if you have a big pool and your pools black green, it's gon na, take you a while, but trust me it's gon na work, add the shock to the bucket and then use what you're seeing here is a paint stirrer, some sort of wooden stirrer and Slowly, stir the shock and the water together, and then you can pour that bucket of pre dissolved shock.

All around your swimming pool. Try to get it as all around the pool as much as possible, don't throw it in the middle. Don't like try to, like you, know, toss the bucket in the middle of the pool, because that's gon na cause a lot of splashing, and we don't want that. You just want to slowly pour the bucket of pre dissolve shock around your swimming pool, making sure it covers everything.

Meanwhile, your filter system should be running 24/7. This whole time just keep it running. You know if you have a timer turn it off. Just let this thing go.

We're gon na run your pump and filter 24 hours a day, seven days a week until the pool is crystal clear. That is, you got to do that and when you're shocking, you got to run it and the reason we shock at is because the Sun can burn off one part per million of chlorine every single hour and the chlorine that we're adding with the calcium hypochlorite shock Is it is, what do I want to say it's it's unstabilized, meaning that there is no protectant in the chlorine. That's gon na stop the Sun from burning it off. So, if we add it at night, we have a good.

You know eight to ten hours of no sunlight for this shock to go into your pool, kill it that algae while it's running through you know, while the pool is circulating, we are just killing algae, that's what we're doing overnight and so just keep it running, and Then we're gon na move on to day two, where we're gon na assess the color again so again, we've put the shock in the pool. We've run the filter system, all night algae is being killed and what is the color the next day? Hopefully, if you had a black pool its teal, green or cloudy blue, that would be ideal. If you had a teal green pool chances are it's cloudy blue. The the color we're looking for is cloudy blue, not any tinge of green, even teal.

We don't want teal. It has to be cloudy blue if it's cloudy blue, you have successfully killed all of the algae in your pool. That's it that's as simple as that, however, if there is still a twinge of green or it's still dark, green or teal, you will have to shock again again when I, when I said earlier, you need to stock up on shock. You need to stock up on shocks because this may happen and so the following night, you don't have to do anything else.

Just the following night hit it with exactly the same amount of shock that you added the night before I don't care what color it is at this point just add it that same amount of shock, again you're, just gon na kill the crap out of this algae And then, hopefully, on day, three, your cloudy blue again we're trying to get to cloudy blue. That is the name of the game and then, once we are at cloudy blue, we have added shot. We have shopped this thing to death. We have killed all the algae.

Now we have now we can add clarifier, so clarifier works very simply. Okay. This is a representation of what cloudy water is. Before you add cloud clarifier.

There is a so when you, when you add it that shock you killed. The algae algae is green. You killed it, it is gray. There is a bunch of particles now floating in your water and there's a lot of them.

I mean a ton that is making your water look cloudy. It is dead algae, it is all sorts of things, but there's a bunch of these little tiny particles. Now your filter system is going to be solely responsible for clearing your pool so again we're keeping the filter and pump running 24/7 until it's clear, but we have all these little tiny particles and those little tiny particles can actually make it through the filter system. Without being filtered, that's very possible, so we add clarifier to the water and when we add clarifier to the water, it takes those tiny, tiny, little particles and it bunches them together and it creates bigger particles and those bigger particles, move through your filter system and actually Get picked up by your filter and you are essentially clearing your pool.

The only the only thing about getting clarifier is this takes time. It takes time for the filter system to run through all the water in your pool, and it may take a couple of additions of clarifier before you're completely clear and during this entire time you just want to make sure that your pool is actually swimmable. In fact it is swimmable, and you know, swimming in your pool, actually helps clarify or move. You know all of the particles through the filter system.

But let's look at day-to-day and beyond here's how we're going to get your pool from cloudy blue to crystal-clear swimmable back to the way it was we're gon na keep the system running 24/7 until it's clear. I've mentioned that several times it is literally the most important thing you can do if you need to backwash wash your pool if your pressure goes up ten parts per million over the normal running pressure, which I talked about all over some university comm and in the Pool care handbook and video course that will mention later, but this is just absolutely key to clearing your pool. Make sure you test the water again to make sure that the pH and the alkalinity are balanced and then make sure that you have enough sanitizer in your pool. So now you can actually add regular chlorine or whatever sanitizer you use to to you know, kill normal bacteria and to keep algae at bay.

I mentioned earlier about algaecide. You can add algaecide at this point, because what algaecide does again is it's like a pesticide? It keeps algae, it keeps algae away from your pool, it keeps it from growing, but so does your sanitizer. So if you keep enough sanitizer in your pool at all times, you will keep algae at bay and you really don't need to add algaecide at that point. Algaecide is really a backup in case you know, you forget, to add chlorine or whatever sanitizers.

Are you using your pool? If you forget to add it, and you go a couple of days and it's you know not sanitized the the algaecide hopefully will keep the algae away. So you can do both, but I recommend, if you just keep the sanitizer, you know you keep your eye on the ball. You'll be good and then keep adding clarifier until it's clear, it's it. If you follow the instructions on the back of whatever clarifier you're using it'll, tell you how often you can add it.

Adding too much clarifier is actually not a good idea because it does the reverse. So you want to add exactly what the instructions on the back of the clarifier tell you to add to your size pool and then do it every few days. That's really all you need. It has an adverse effect.

If you add too much so just it's, not one of those things where you act like more is better it's. The perfect amount is better, so finally be patient, because you are talking about a filter system and depending on how big how big your filter system is and how powerful it is and good it is at you know, clearing the pool it may take a couple days. If you have a sand filter, it's gon na take a while. If you have a cartridge filter, it may be a little bit faster and if you have a de filter even faster than that, but it just takes time.

Here's the good news just because it's cloudy doesn't mean you can't swim in it. Cloudy water, as long as you get it tested and the pH and alkalinity and in the sanitizers are all the proper levels. It's perfectly okay to swim in and in fact, swimming actually helps you to clear your pool. So I hope this is a really solid action plan for you to get rid of algae, and you can do this no matter when you get algae.

If you get algae in the middle of the year, the beginning of the year or right before you're about to close or whatever you can do this system, it works every single time. I've done it. I've done it on. I can't even tell you how many pools thousands, perhaps millions of pools at this point because of swim University and I've always seen good results with this, because it's just science.

Chlorine kills algae that it's just that simple, and I mentioned earlier that we have the pool care handbook and video course - and this is sort of an extension of swim University and how we keep the lights on here. So the pool care handbook and video course are two products that are combined into one. The video course is this. You know massive new, it's actually brand new video course on everything you need to know about pool care and the handbook is a three hundred plus page book that is a digital PDF.

So it's an e-book, and both of these are our digital products that you can get right now and it's the easiest pool chemistry tutorial you'll ever have, and you know a lot of people struggle with pool chemistry. I break it down super simple and via video and text, and I talk about the secrets to handling greening cloudy water, like we did here in even more detail and how to save tons of money on chemicals. I know sometimes you can be up sold on chemicals. All day long and if you're new to this, you don't know what to add, and so I tell you exactly what you need and what you don't.

We also talked about hacks to keep your pool clear all year, long so that you don't ever run into problems like this again and how to open and close your pool yourself. Save yourself a little bit of money and the good news about these products is once you buy them once they're, always updated and they're available at any time you own these things for life that you own, the video course you own the PDF and we update them. We try to update them every year and what you get is in the pool care handbook and video course, but you get in the video course specifically, it's 31 video lessons instantly available as soon as you buy always up-to-date and you can stream it. You can stream all of the content anywhere where there's an internet connection.

If you have to go out to your pool - and you have an internet connection, you have your smartphone or your iPad or whatever it is. You can watch these videos and the same goes with the pool care handbook, which is a PDF three hundred plus pages, fully Illustrated always up to date and again you can download this to your smartphone or tablet. So you don't need an internet connection. So it's kind of the best of both worlds.

You can go to some university comm, slash, pool care handbook or you can click the link below. I hope this video was super helpful and I hope you have a great time with your swimming pool and as always, I saw I like to say: happy swimming.