New Pool Owner with questions!

[Ams724]

Hello! I'm new to the TFP community and I am new to pool ownership!

I just purchased a new home and opened the above ground pool last month. It's 14,700K gallons with a brand new Hayward sand filter and a Hayward pump. We started off with an algae issue which was cleared up as of 3 days ago. However, I have been a slave to the pool store. I remembered our home inspector suggesting this site and after reading through various threads I am hoping to move away from driving to Leslie pools every week to have them test my water and sell me more chemicals. I just ordered my own test it (Taylor K-2006) but that will not be here for at least a week. I do have a cheap test kit that will probably suffice until my Taylor kit arrives. In the mean time, here are the test results provided to me by the pool store as of this morning:

TAC - 0
CH - 160
CYA - 70
TA - 50
pH - 7.2
TDS - 600

The young man at Leslie instructed me to add 10 lbs of the alkaline product to boost my alkaline, which I did as soon as I returned home. I asked him what my next step would be and he told me to either add chlorine tomorrow or add the same powder shock I have been using. As of right now, the water is only very slightly cloudy, but otherwise blue and looking good.

I guess my question is, how accurate were his instructions? I'm trying to get my pool swim ready and safe for the weekend! Any advice/Instructions would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you so much!!!

 

[UN1017]

Welcome to TFP.

First off... I'm really impressed by your choice in a home inspector. Glad to hear there are still plenty of honest professionals out there.

You are on the right track. At this point you need to stay away from the pool store and, at a minimum, keep adding bleach to the pool. You have to keep the green away until your test kit arrives. I would start with 1 1/2 jugs (121 oz.) of bleach (8.25%) and add 1/3 jug each day until some accurate testing can be done.

 

[Jezza]

Welcome to the forum.

Yep don't add anything else other than bleach or liquid chlorine at this stage. And stay away from the pool store for testing

When your K2006 arrives you can post up a set of full results so we can look at the 'big picture'.

Just something to think about- the K2006 has very little of the FAS-DPD chemicals that you need. If you are reporting some cloudiness it could be algae and you are then going to need to raise your chlorine levels and this requires more of the testing reagent in particular. Unfortunately it can be difficult to obtain when you need it quickly and you don't want to run out at an important time. You can get some more refills from http://tftestkits.net

 

[Ams724]

Thank you both so much for your input. I will follow your guidance and report back once my test kit arrives and I can get some good numbers.

Thanks!!