Help my water is brown and so is everything that is made of plastic (steps, ladder, skimmer etc) in the pool. We had a major over chlorination issue in June when our auto chlorinator dumped all of the dissolved tablets (about 8) into the pool all at one time. Our pool store could not tell us what to do until the level of chlorine came back down to normal. Every level is now normal but the water still has a slight brown tinge (it may be on the vinyl liner) and scrubbing the steps has helped but we are unable to remove all of the brown. Any ideas what we can do to get rid of this problem?

Question:

Help my water is brown and so is everything that is made of plastic (steps, ladder, skimmer etc) in the pool. We had a major over chlorination issue in June when our auto chlorinator dumped all of the dissolved tablets (about 8) into the pool all at one time. Our pool store could not tell us what to do until the level of chlorine came back down to normal. Every level is now normal but the water still has a slight brown tinge (it may be on the vinyl liner) and scrubbing the steps has helped but we are unable to remove all of the brown. Any ideas what we can do to get rid of this problem?

Answer:

The brown discoloration could be from metals that were oxidized when your chlorine got so high. You might try some metal removing agent/stain remover. You could try this on a small area to see if it is effective. There is also a product available that will allow you to test the stain to see what kind of stain it is. This is referred to as a stain ID kit. It might be helpful to determine what product would be best for treatment of your brownish color water or liner.

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