Please, help me understand the TFP way and why anyone would want to work on their pool daily?

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is there a brand or brands of liquid chlorine I should look out for? Store near me carries poolife stuff. I have a Walmart and all other major stores near me. I also have a Leslie’s.
 
Walmart is fine.. they should have 10% liquid Chlorine. There is a date code on the side of the bottle that lists the year and the day oft that year it was made if you want to get the fresher stuff. At this point lets just get some chlorine in that puppy. Leslile's may carry higher concentrated chlorine.. sometimes they have 12.5 % stuff. HomeDepot and Lowes.. all have it too, usually 10%. In a pinch you can use unscented laundry chlorine with no additives.. that is usually 5% concentration. Whatever is most convenient.

Oh and if this is new to you, when you add the chlorine to your pool, turn on your pumps and pour it in a pencil sized stream in front of a return.. a water jet, so it helps disperse it.
 
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mguzzy said:
Walmart is fine.. they should have 10% liquid Chlorine. There is a date code on the side of the bottle that lists the year and the day oft that year it was made if you want to get the fresher stuff. At this point lets just get some chlorine in that puppy. Leslile's may carry higher concentrated chlorine.. sometimes they have 12.5 % stuff. HomeDepot and Lowes.. all have it too, usually 10%. In a pinch you can use unscented laundry chlorine with no additives.. that is usually 5% concentration. Whatever is most convenient.

Oh and if this is new to you, when you add the chlorine to your pool, turn on your pumps and pour it in a pencil sized stream in front of a return.. a water jet, so it helps disperse it.
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thank you! How long after do you have to wait to swim?
 
Others are getting you nicely squared away, but I wanted to share my assessment on “working on your pool daily” as someone who doesn’t use a Saltwater Chlorine Generator and chlorinates exclusively with liquid chlorine.

“Working on” the pool is really a misnomer. Adding chlorine daily takes about 2-3 minutes. A chlorine and ph test takes 2-3 minutes, and I’ll do that every 1-2 days during the Summer, less in the shoulder seasons. A full set of weekly tests maybe 10 minutes.

And if I leave the cover on, I can easily go away for a few days and not worry about the chlorine getting too low.

Add it all up, and I probably spend 45 minutes per week during the Summer on chemical management. It would take me more time to drive to a pool store, get pool stored, and drive home. And the TFP way costs a heck of a lot less money.

Picking up the chemicals I do need, from a local home improvement/big box store, takes no extra time because I can stock up on the couple things I need when I’m there for another reason anyway.

As others have shared, there are other gizmos like a SWG that can cut that time down even more. My season is short and I don’t need it to be any easier for me!

Welcome to TFP. You’re in good hands here.
 
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YippeeSkippy said:
I think you only read the first heading on what TF Testkits sells- here is the fancier kit (I love it!) but the cheaper TF-100 is great too.
tftestkits.net

TF-Pro Salt

tftestkits.net tftestkits.net
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Haven't had a chance to use this kit yet in our pool isn't built yet, but I really like the kit itself just like @YippeeSkippy indicated. I've tried it on a few samples of water from the neighbor's pool and it worked great! I like the kit. I'm sure i could buy a tackle box for all reagents and buy in bulk. (Writes that down). Welcome to TFP!
 
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Yeah, the phrase "working on the pool" is a great misnomer as magitek indicated. Last year was my first year with a brand new pool. I was afraid it was going to take all of my time to keep this thing in line. Fortunately I found TFP prior to taking control of the pool and I never looked back. Everyone's claims of "it's so easy" and "there's nothing to it, as long as you have a proper test kit" are not only claims, they are straight truth. I tested almost daily for chlorine and pH (5 minutes), just because I had no idea what the pool's personality was. Would test once a month for everything else. I run a SWCG, so I wasn't adding chlorine, only muriatic acid to control the pH. And that was about a 2 minute job, about once every 3rd day or so. At the end of the season I added an acid injection system, to take over the acid additions for me, so it made it even less work. Once we got into the fall season, I backed off to testing about once a week. As we are getting into the spring and warmer temps, I have increased my testing a little bit, about once every couple of days, but in reality I only need to test about once a week. Still once a month for the full battery of tests.

Edit - Forgot about the skimmers. Have to check those and clean but depending upon the time of year, that adds maybe 10 minutes every couple of days.

I have an in floor cleaning system, and I just recently purchased a robot to do the pool wall brushing for me. So Saturday and Sunday mornings, while everyone is still asleep except for this guy, I toss the robot in to brush the pool walls.

I spend much more time looking at the pool and wishing the water temps were warmer so that I had something to do with it, than I spend actually 'working' on it.

--Jeff
 
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I am jumping in to say HI and WELL DONE! You are on the right track and your pool will look better than it ever did with a pool service.

See what a pool service does it come once a week. They dump enough stuff in it to get the levels way up in hopes it will last until them come back next week. That causes many problems to the pool and the people who use the pool.

Kim :kim:
 
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As others have mentioned, if you don't install a SWG, I highly recommend using a Stenner pump to inject LC daily. I have stenner and a 15 gallon tank that I refill approximately once a month. I believe that is a little high, but I have been dealing with some leaks that make it hard to get pool chemistry adjusted, so I am adding more than I need. The nice thing about the stenner, like the SWG, is that it is set and forget. I do a few days of testing, determine what my average daily LC need of my pool is, and then set the stenner for run time. easy peasy
 
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Welp NG, My man @Dirk always said that all someone had to do was ask a question and ‘folks would be falling over themselves to help you’. So far as a newb that’s unsure of the program you have 4 Mods, an Admin, 4 guides and 9 well known (and loved) members falling over themselves to help you. Those words have never rung more true.

Imagine how much they’d try to help you as they get to know you and have an actual vested interest in seeing you succeed.

And there is many many more folks right beside them just as willing.

You’re in a GREAT spot. Join us. :)
 
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I will give you my patented NEW to TFP Standard Rant:
Read the book, buy the test kit, add Liquid Chlorine for your Cyanuric Acid as directed (Probably have to SLAM for a little bit), enjoy your Trouble Free Pool

Here's the thing, nobody here is trying to make money off of you, we have no interest in selling you any gizmo's or products. The Pool Store/Pool Company sees dollar signs every time you walk through the door, and there goal is to extract as much green from your wallet as possible. The advice here is solid, backed by empirical data and years (sometimes decades) of experience with all types of swimming pools and all of the problems that come with them. So you have to ask yourself, who has your best interests in mind, and who's going to do a better job taking care of your pool, you (backed by this site and a solid test kit giving you known results as frequently as you need them) or some guy at a pool store who is at best a teenager who doesn't have a clue what he's doing, or at worst someone out to fleece you for as much as they can get.
/end rant
 
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I would just like to say that for the money you will save not having the pool service come by you might want to seriously consider investing that savings in a salt water system. Really after the start up of the pool in the spring and getting all your salt, TA, CH and CYA levels set the only chemical you will be adding with any frequency over the course of the season is muriatic acid. You might have to bump up your chlorine levels every so often after a heavy rain for example with liquid chlorine, bleach or Cal hypo. The level of convenience a salt system provides is really worth it if you can afford it in my opinion. I probably spend more of my time skimming the pool and cleaning the filters on my robot then I do adding chemicals. I notice you have a lot of trees, I do as well and when you have a lot of trees you really want to make sure your chlorine levels don’t ever dip. A salt system really helps.
 
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NextGallon said:
Looks like they only have refills for t kits. I ordered the TAYLOR TECHNOLOGIES INC K-2006 TEST KIT COMP CHLORINE FAS-DPD fro Amazon. Arrives Thursday.
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Code: 
https://tftestkits.net/test-kits-c4/

Sometimes the Amazon kits are older stock. Check the date codes on the reagent bottle when you receive your K2006C.
 
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