I started last Thursday after reading most of this website for a couple of days. First thing I did was a deep clean of my sand filter. I had not done ANYTHING to my filter in the 8 years I have been in this house, and I can only imagine how long the previous owner had it while doing nothing to it. After watching the video and reading the instructions I saw here, I started my deep clean. It took 1 hour 15 minutes to get the water clear, and I could not believe what flowed out of that thing!!! The great news is that my filter pressures are now 4 PSI below what they used to be and the suction and return pressures are much improved. I actually find debris in my skimmer basket now. Once I got the pool filled and pump running, I tested my water. CYA was absent, PH was 6.8, CL 0, Alkalinity 70 and I believe calcium was around 80. Spent the rest of the day adding chemicals and getting all of my levels within range. Had trouble getting the FC up for the first day or so, but after several trips to Walmart and several rounds of chlorine pouring, they started to stabilize a bit and the water quickly turned to a nice skim-milk-like liquid. Took some time for that to SLOWLY start clearing up. By Tuesday, things were improving nicely, but still had a few days to go. Tuesday evening I come home to my pump hose having blown off the pump intake, which of course led to water loss down to the bottom of the skimmer. Somehow, my pump did not burn out. After several obscenities, I dropped the hose in and filled the pool back-up for several hours. Retested everything last night to find CL at 1, PH at 6.8, and surprisingly CYA at 40 which is where I wanted it anyway, so that was lucky. Got the PH back-up and added yet more CL and called it quits at 9:30PM. That leads to today, a day in which we received some very heavy rains this morning, so it will be trip to Walmart for some more Borax and CL, then home to test and adjust again. The only good thing so far has been that I was not forced to completely start over from loosing as much water as I did. I guess for a first time it is going well, but after 8 years of hatred and frustration with this pool, it is difficult to remain positive, but I am sticking with it!