My pool water is brown, what can i do to clear it up?

Question

we have a water filter its just the water we used didnt run through the filter, it just came straight from our well which means its untreated water. its a light brown color and the pool we have a little filter that came with the pool. is there some type of chemical i could buy at wal mart or some place like that? i just bought this pool today. its nothing much. just 12 feet wide and about 14 inches deep so i dont need a vaccum or anything, its just the water is a little brown. the walls and floor are clean. what type of chemicals work the best to clear up brown water?

Answer 1

Just to let others know I have finally solved my Intex brown water problem, and I wanted to share my experience with you all. I bought this Intex pool as a "first pool" with the idea of using it for a year just to make sure we enjoyed it before investing a few thousand on a permanent one.

It took us a couple days to get the ground level, and another day and a half to fill the pool. We were so excited to watch the water level rise and once it was full we were ready to swim! So that night I threw the Shock in and went to sleep having dreams of diving in the pool and relaxing with a beer in my crystal clear pool.

Well what a shock I had in the morning to find my water Brown as the Illinois River, and to be honest the river looks better then our pool did. I checked the filter and yes it was working and the filter was Chocolate color, so I took it out and rinsed it clean and put it back in.

I called the local pool company and he explained that it was the iron reacting to the chlorine, and he sold me a bottle of StainBan. Once I got the StainBan in I had to babysit this pool every two hours so I could clean the filter off. I even took the discharge hose off the pool and placed an old t-shirt old it, and that to was stained red within an hour. I fought with this pool for 2 weeks and the best I could get it was light brown, and that was not good enough for me. Once I realized that the filter was doing very little I knew I had two choices:

1. Take the pool back.
2. Or keep the pool but buy a better filter.

I did some looking and a lot of calling and decided a sand filter is what I needed for well water. I checked around and found out that a sand filter new is more then the whole pool, but used is a completely different story. I ended up getting a Pentair 1.5hp 200lbs sand filter for $150.00 off of Craigslist, and it connected right to my Intex hoses all I needed was two hose clamps. It took me 5 minutes to get the Pentair Sand Filter hooked up, and with 10 hours my water was better then it has been in two weeks of constantly running my Intex pump. I am now of my 15th hour of the sand filter and my water is 95% crystal clear, and I would imagine by tomorrow it will be 100%.

So long story short, this Intex pool filter is not made for well water, and it can be totally frustrating dealing with all the hassles of brown water but there is hope out there. I have even posted a video on youtube to show the progress of my pool. Please forgive me for the quality of the video but you will be able to see the difference. I hope this post gives you some hope if you are dealing with the problem I had. Here is the link to the 1st video of my pool http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHL3rsyhdw4 and I will be taking video until it is crystal clear. Thanks!!