Green Pool Cleanup in Southwest Houston, From Oak Leaves to Bayou Mud

The pump stopped pulling before the water turned

Under a heavy oak canopy, such as the live oak lots around Tanglewood, the bloom is often the second failure. Leaf stems and catkins pack the skimmer basket, slip through to the pump basket, and wedge in the impeller. The pump keeps running and sounds normal, but water barely moves, chlorine stops reaching the deep end, and algae takes the corners first.

So the cleanup starts at the equipment, not with a bucket of shock. Baskets are emptied, the impeller is cleared, and flow at the returns is confirmed before chlorine goes in, because shock poured into still water mostly treats the top few feet. Then the leaf layer on the floor comes out, since sunken leaves keep consuming chlorine until they are gone. If the pump ran starved long enough to damage its seal, that goes to pool pump repair.

Bayou floods: brown water first, green water second

When Brays Bayou leaves its banks in Meyerland or Braeswood Place, nearby pools can take in muddy floodwater that turns them tan or brown. That color is suspended silt, and chlorine does nothing to it. Bayou floodwater can also carry sewage and lawn chemicals, so a pool that took it in is handled as a storm clean-up before it is treated as a green pool, and the equipment is checked before anything is switched on.

Once the silt has settled and been vacuumed out to waste, what remains is pool water thinned by rain and runoff, with its chlorine and stabilizer diluted. That is when algae tends to appear, often within days. The chemistry is rebuilt from fresh readings, stabilizer included, rather than from whatever the pool held before the storm. Our guide on green pools after a storm lays out the full sequence.

Refilling with chloraminated city water

Sometimes part of the water has to go, usually when a long run of chlorine tablets has pushed stabilizer so high that chlorine can barely work. Refill water from Houston's Main System is disinfected with chloramine, at an average of 2.8 ppm in Houston Public Works' 2025 report. A test kit counts chloramine as combined chlorine, so a freshly refilled pool can look as if it has a chloramine problem of its own.

It does not need special treatment. Holding free chlorine high enough breaks the incoming chloramine down along with whatever the algae left behind, and the combined reading falls as that happens. Calcium, pH and alkalinity are then set for the water actually in the pool, and weekly pool service keeps them there. If your Houston address is served by a utility district instead of the city, that district's water report is the one that applies.

Questions that decide the first visit

• Is water moving at the returns, or is the impeller packed with leaves?
• Is the color green, or tan and brown from silt?
• Did bayou or street water come over the coping?
• How high has stabilizer climbed after months of tablets?
• Does the refill water come from the City of Houston or a utility district?