Splashing in from PDX

Howdy Neighbor!

Rare to see a house with an inground pool round these parts. Nice find! I love the shape, that's really unique.

As Mark said, check out Pool School and ABCs of Pool Water Chemistry. Lots of info there. If you're dealing with cloudy water now and again, you probably want to look at the algae section very closely.

A few local points... 30ppm CYA is really all we need here. I mistaked and pushed mine to 50 this year (I messed up measuring CYA) and it's been fine, but with all the clouds I usually run at 30 with no issues. Also, no one carries liquid chlorine 10% that I've found. Home Depot might have it early in the summer when seasonal pools are hot and in stock, but I never looked till late July and it seems like it's just not something we can get. Pool store maybe, if you can find one of those! They're actually "pool and spa" stores. Bleach at 6% works fine. Stay away from Safeway for bleach, all they have is Chlorox brand specialty scented blah blah bad for your pool bleach, and a couple small bottles of degraded bleach which is worthless. Freddys always has great bleach though.

Our water is SOFT, as you probably know, but it's really really really soft. I think when I tested it years ago it's <5ppm CH. Since you've got a plaster pool you will need to check your CH and probably add some now and again to maintain a good CSI. PoolMath will help you with that and also with all your chemicals.

Oh, there's a pool and spa store out in Clackamas just off I-205 that does have reagents and test kits, but I prefer to order from TFTestkits.net. It's cheaper and ships fast. No need to drive.