New to the Trouble Free pool - look OK?

[dmd5]

Where do I go from here? Just let it ride and add liquid chlorine a few times a week?

Now I have a inline tablet chlorinator, but i know from past experiences that the stabilizer can get too high so I am glad
I found this forum. The tablet chlorinator is turned off for now.

I do travel and have to leave the pool for weeks sometimes so I guess I will have to use the tablets then.

Pool is in full sun except for late in the day, gets some shade from the house then for a few hours as the sun sets. Pool can get
pretty warm in the summer, almost 90 deg. I usually run the pump about 7 hours at night with sprayers working to cool it down. Pump
speed is pretty low.
Input water is from city and is pretty alkaline, haven't had to add yet but will soon and that will raise the Alkalinity.

Ph will probably come up with the tables turned off.

Water is very clear, no problems with algae.

From the pool store:
Chlorine 4
Total Available 4
calcium 270
CYA 80
ALK 80
PH 7.2
copper 0
iron 0
Phos 300

Pool store says they can't get liquid chlorine, but my local Lowes has it at 10% for $3.25 a gallon.

 

[BoDarville]

Welcome to TFP!

Taking your numbers at face value, the only issue I see is your chlorine to CYA ratio. At your current CYA of 80 ppm, you need to be maintaining a target free chlorine (FC) of 9 ppm and avoid letting it drop below a minimum of 6 ppm - see Chlorine CYA Chart.

If you are serious about adopting our methods, the first step is doing your own testing using one of the Recommended Test Kits. While pool store testing is free, it is not reliable. It is dependent on the person doing the testing as well as the ambient lighting in the store. This primarily affects the CYA test as lighting is crucial in obtaining an accurate reading.

You can ignore phosphate levels if you use our methods since it will be irrelevant. Also since you have city water, there should be no need to test for iron or copper as long as you avoid copper or other metal-based algaecides.

Since the CYA is at the high end of the recommended range, your plan to use tablets when traveling may have to be postponed unless you lower the CYA level to give you some headroom.

Pool store says they can't get liquid chlorine...

The real reason is that they choose not to get liquid chlorine. They would much rather sell you the other forms of chlorine that will either raise your CYA or calcium levels which will result in future opportunities to sell uninformed pool owners other chemical elixirs to (allegedly) help solve the problems associated with overuse of dichlor, trichlor, or cal-hypo forms of chlorine. In effect, most pool stores try to you into a repeat buyer since you will always have some sort of problem if you follow their methods.