I'm leasing a home with a pool and am completely responsible for it. I waited for days to hear from the owner's pool service, and finally gave up and went to the closest pool store with a water sample. I used a few different pool volume calculators online (kidney-shaped pool) as instructed by the pool store clerk and came up with 30,500 gallons. As I arrived at the pool with the chemicals I was instructed to add, the pool service owner finally called. He told me he only opens and closes the pool and suggested I empty the baskets first, including the pump basket, then backwash before adding any chemicals. We've had so much rain the water level was a bit high, so it was a great opportunity to backwash. The water level will be tricky because the pool has settled a little lower on one side. The skimmer basket may suck in air on the high side if I don't keep the water level high enough, but I can't let it get too high or the skimmer basket on the low side won't be able to do its job. He said the chemicals sounded reasonable given the amount of rain we've had the past few days, and that the owners moved last weekend, so the pool has had no care for about 11 days. The owners kept 2-3 3" chlorine tablets in the two skimmer baskets (there is no "chlorinator"), but there was no trace of any remaining. I found the 3" tablets in the shed and put 3 in each of the 2 skimmer baskets. He disagreed with the volume calculation, and guessed it was a 26k or 28k gallon pool. I added 4 gallons (4 lbs.) of liquid shock, 11 lbs of alkalinity plus (supposed to add 11 more lbs. in 6-8 hours), and 0.5 lbs of Stabilizer/Conditioner based on what the computer at the pool store said about the water sample. I also added 12 oz. of Defend+ Algaecide. After I finished, I found a paper from the same pool store dated 2008 from 2 home-owners ago. It said the volume was 18k gallons. 18k is quite a bit different than 30.5k. Now I'm really frightened I added way too much of everything to the pool. I found this forum on Amazon as I was searching for a test kit to buy. The Taylor kit looks better to me than the Poolmaster that is the number 1 seller. What if I added too much? How do I fix that? How quickly do I need to fix it? Will it cause any harm if I added too much? Should everyone stay out of the pool until I'm sure all of the levels are safe? I doubt I can really accurately calculate the volume (kidney shape), so how do I balance the pool? This is what the pool store said about the water test:
FC: 0.22
CC 0.16
pH 7.8
TA 52
CH 363
CYA 19
FC: 0.22
CC 0.16
pH 7.8
TA 52
CH 363
CYA 19
