I think I am almost there!!

[poolmommy]

Background:
1. New homeowner. Pool was neglected for a month as we couldnt move in immediately. Pool was taken good care of by previous owner.
2. It turned into a green pool. Immediately contacted "pool company". They came every week and did their stuff but we were still not living in the new house so I didnt see what they did and I didn't do anything. Every week they charged $150+ and it wasnt improving. After moving in and spending 650 bucks on them, I couldnt afford more. ( In all fairness, I realized they couldnt fight a green pool by just coming 10 mins weekly while I did nothing)
By then I had read everything online about pool, read books from lib, and poolSchool here. On their last visit I tagged along and saw where is my filter, how to turn it on etc.
3. Day 1: I backflushed DE filter as the pool guys had told me ( bump few times, open valve, add some DE) every 1 hr.
Day 2 morn: Read the DE manual and learnt proper full backflush. Added 2 gallons of liquid chlorine at night. Brushed whatever I could, couldnt see bottom even on shallow end.
Day 2 evening: Kept backflushing like crazy coz the pressure would go up almost immediately. Add 2 more gallons liquid chlorine at night. Brushed. It was much better. Some green at bottom and cloudy water but not opaque!
Day 3: Went to pool store and bought the only robot vacuum they carry. I was desperate. Vacuumed 3 times. Backflushed once. Could see bottom!
Day 4: No more chemicals, just cleaned morning evening. Water was blue and clear. Have attached picture.
Ok now my water is clear and I finally got my TF50 kit ( I should have ordered TF100 ).
I tested today:
CFD: FC= 2 ppm
CC= 0
TA: 70
CYA =0? ( Nothing happened to black dot at all!!)
Ph ( using test strips as I can't find "OTO test kit" in walmart) = Just below ideal range

After testing, I opened the chlorinator and it was empty. So filled it up with 3" chlorine tablets and added 2 more tablets in skimmer. Added 1.5 cups of alkanity increaser. ( They left tons of chemicals).
Backflushed DE filter. Vaccuumed. Pool water sparkles.

What do I do now?

You guys are the BEST ever. Thank you so much for this WONDERFUL resource!

 

[CGDogs]

New myself but from what I have read you are going to want to get some stabilizer in there so your chlorine lasts. But that's comming from a newb...Goodluck

 

[Jeetyet]

You should really work on getting a more accurate estimate of your pool volume so that you can make good use of The Pool Calculator if you intend to continue using the pucks. Thats assuming your plan is to use them until your CYA level comes up to suggested levels and then switch to bleach/liquid chlorine for maintenance thereafter.

Starting with no CYA, and assuming your estimate of 15,000 gals is close, its going to take around 15 to 20 of the TricChlor pucks (assuming 8 ozs each) to get your CYA into the recommended range (30 to 50), but not knowing pool volume for sure you might want to start checking CYA levels well before you've added/dissolved that many pucks. Depending upon how many of them you have in stock and how easy you have access to granulated CYA you might wish to consider just saving the pucks for later use when you're away from home for an extended period of time.

If it was me, I would stop the pucks after using up whats already in the chlorinator/skimmer and get some granulated CYA/stablizer. Use the pool calculator to figure out how much to get and add (to whats already in there) for a 15,000 gal pool and add half the recommended amount now and test in a week to see if the numbers are what you would expect. If they're not then you'd know by about how much your volume estimate is off and adjust everything accordingly. Of course if you're pretty confident in your volume estimate you could go ahead and add the entire recommended amount, but keep in mind that if you overshoot you're going to have to drain some water to remove the excess.

As always, use The Chlorine/CYA Chart to keep your Chlorine above minimum levels as your CYA level changes.

 

[Bama Rambler]

If you know how many tablets you added and what weight they are, you can figure out how much CYA they will add using the pool calculator. If you have a lot of tablets, you can use them to keep it chlorinated with them until your CYA gets to where you want it. If you don't have many, it's better to add it separately and use bleach for the FC.

 

[poolmommy]

Thank you everyone. I will get to work on finding pool volume!