Send us a photo and we’ll tell you which of three states your pool is in, how long it will actually take, and what it costs — as one flat number, before anyone turns up. We recover pools across St. Petersburg, Clearwater, Largo, Seminole and Palm Harbor.
Green pools turn up everywhere from downtown St. Pete to the north end of the county. These are the cities we run recoveries in.
Anyone quoting the same turnaround for every pool hasn’t looked at yours. Here are the three states we actually find, and what each one honestly takes.
Tier one
The water has gone cloudy with a green cast, but you can still make out the main drain.
Chlorine dipped in the last few days — a missed week, a heavy rain, or a stabilizer level that let the sun burn it off — and algae has just started.
Realistic timeline
Usually clear in 2–3 days
One shock pass, the filter running around the clock, and a couple of brushings.
Tier two
Solid green. You can't see the second step, let alone the floor.
The bloom has been established for a week or two and has colonised the walls and floor, not just the water.
Realistic timeline
Usually 4–7 days
Repeat shock doses over several days, aggressive brushing, and the filter cleaned more than once as it blinds up.
Tier three
Dark green to near-black, a debris layer on the bottom, and often frogs or mosquito larvae.
Months without service. There is a real layer of sludge on the floor now, and that has to come out physically before any chemistry is worth adding.
Realistic timeline
Usually one to two weeks
The sludge layer gets vacuumed out first with our own filtered vacuum — water stays in the pool — then an extended shock-and-hold while the water clears. Even at this state we very rarely drain.
Not sure which one you’re looking at? Text us a photo and we’ll tell you straight — including if it’s a tier one you could handle yourself.
Most failed green pool recoveries aren’t short of chemicals. They’re done out of sequence — shock poured into water that was never going to hold it.
Specifically stabilizer. If cyanuric acid has climbed high enough, chlorine is chemically locked and you can pour it in all week for nothing. Knowing that number up front is the difference between a plan that works and a fortnight of wasted shock — and it's the step most people skip.
We run vacuums with their own integrated filtration, so the leaf litter and dead-algae sludge on the floor comes out of the pool instead of being pushed through your filter or flushed out with the water. It's the reason we can clean pools other services quote a drain on, and why the chemistry then works on water rather than on a pile of debris.
Chlorine loses most of its punch at high pH, so pH is corrected before the shock goes in — otherwise you're paying for chemicals that can't do the job. Then it's dosed to a level that actually holds, not a token amount.
Algae anchored to plaster is shielded from the water chemistry. Brushing walls, steps, and corners is what exposes it — and it is the difference between clearing in days and fighting it for weeks.
Our vacuum takes out everything that has settled. What stays behind is the fine dead algae still suspended in the water, and that has to clear through the filter — which is the part that takes days. It gets cleaned or backwashed as it loads up, not once at the end.
Chlorine crashes again as dead algae keeps breaking down. We return and keep the numbers up until they stay where we put them, rather than declaring it finished the first time it looks blue.
Stabilizer is the number that decides whether your chlorine can work at all — and it’s the one most services never mention until they’re quoting you a drain for it. Here’s what it actually does.
Read the stabilizer guideKilling the algae is the fast part — often the first afternoon. Our vacuum pulls the settled sludge straight out, but the fine material left suspended in the water still has to clear through the filter, and that is what takes days.
The stage people quit on
Grey, milky water is not a setback. It is dead algae in suspension — the proof it worked, and a filtration problem from that point on.
What the days look like
Tier three runs longer at every stage, and the first day is mostly debris removal before any chemistry is worth adding.
Recovery work is the easiest place in this industry to run an hourly meter, and a green pool is the easiest customer to run it on. We quote the job up front instead.
Pool size, which tier it is in, how deep the debris layer is, and what shape the filter is in once the water starts clearing.
How many visits it ends up taking. The return trips to hold the chemistry are part of the quoted job, not add-ons.
The same photo-backed report as our weekly service, after every visit — so you can watch the numbers move rather than take our word for it.
If it’s a tier one and you’d rather have a go yourself, we’re not going to pretend you can’t. The full step-by-step is written up — the same order we use.
The DIY walkthroughNearly every green pool we recover was on nobody’s schedule. Once it’s blue you can roll straight onto weekly service — same flat monthly rate as any other pool, chemicals included, and the recovery is done being an emergency.
Green pool recovery across Pinellas County — St. Petersburg, Clearwater, Largo, Seminole, and the beaches. Storm damage instead? See storm cleanup.
Straight answers, including when you don’t need us. See all FAQs →
It depends entirely on how far gone it is. A pool that's just hazy and tinted is usually clear in two to three days. A solid green pool where you can't see the steps is more like four to seven. A dark, neglected pool with a debris layer on the bottom can take one to two weeks, most of which is filtration time after we've vacuumed the sludge out. Anyone promising 24 hours regardless of what's in your pool is guessing.
Very rarely, and it's usually the wrong answer. We run vacuums with integrated filtration, which means we pull the dead algae and sludge out of the pool directly rather than draining the water to get rid of it — so pools that other services quote a full drain and acid wash on generally come back with cleaning and chemistry instead. Draining also carries real risk in saturated Florida ground. The one situation where dilution genuinely is the fix is a stabilizer level so high that chlorine can't work at any dose, and that's uncommon.
Often, yes — plenty of tier-one pools come back with a bag of shock and a weekend of running the filter, and we've written the whole process up if you want to try. Where it usually goes wrong is stabilizer (chlorine that can't work no matter how much goes in), not brushing enough, and not running the filter long enough. If you've already shocked it twice and it's still green, one of those three is why.
No — that's the normal middle stage and a good sign. Cloudy grey or milky water is dead algae suspended in the pool, and clearing it is purely a filtration problem now. It needs the filter running continuously and cleaned as it loads up. This is the phase where people give up a day too early.
Most do. Algae that sat against plaster can leave a shadow that brushes out over the following weeks once the water is balanced. Deeper staining — usually metal rather than organic — sometimes needs a separate treatment. We'll tell you honestly which kind you have once the water is clear enough to see the surface.
Not automatically. Clear water and sanitized water aren't the same thing, and during a recovery the chlorine is often still well above swimming range anyway. We'll tell you when the numbers are actually in a safe band — usually a day or two after it looks finished.
Same bloom, different cause — and if the storm is what did it, the debris and runoff usually need dealing with alongside the algae, so it is worth starting from our storm cleanup instead. Rainwater dilutes the chlorine while the pump sits off for days, then the runoff drops in the phosphates and nitrates that feed what follows. Caught within a few days it is a tier one or two. Left a fortnight it is a tier three.
It's a flat quote, given up front from photos, and it varies with the size of the pool, which tier it's in, and whether the filter can keep up. What it isn't is an hourly meter — storm and recovery work is the easiest place in this industry to run one, and we'd rather you knew the number before anyone turns up.
We’ll tell you which tier it’s in, roughly how long it’ll take, and what it costs — one flat number, same day.
No obligation, and if it’s a tier one we’ll say so.