Hi. I'm Torre(cootiequeen) and have recently inherited a home made lap pool. It's about 30' x 6' and 3' deep. I'm told may be less than 5k gal. I'm only able to be here on weekends and sometimes skip a weekend. Most of the time I've been able to keep the water in balance but occasionally I miss a treatment. Then pond scum smell! I put some acid in it and the smell was gone within an hour. I threw half a pkg of shock in before I left for the week. Got test strips. It seems to be doing ok. I think I need to put acid in the night we arrive and chlorine before we leave. And a lot of chlorine if I'm going to be gone more than a week. Any thoughts? I read the water should be circulated daily but I haven't mastered the timer yet and just used it manually when I'm there.
Timing of adding chemicals
- Thread starter Cootiequeen
- Start date
- Jun 22, 2014
- 47,752
- Pool Size
- 17888
- Surface
- Fiberglass
- Chlorine
- Salt Water Generator
- SWG Type
- CircuPool RJ-45 Plus
Hello Torre and welcome to TFP! 
Being the "occasional" pool visitor (weekends & such), you might find consistent management a bit tricky. I can tell from some of your descriptions you manage your water differently that we do here at TFP. But I'll try to give you a few TFP pointers to get started and you can go from there:
- #1 is having the right test kit. We recommend a TF-100 or Taylor K-2006C. Test strips are notoriously inaccurate, and so is that free store testing.
- With the proper test kit, we need to see a full set of water results
- Those bags of shock from the pool store have side effects by adding stabilizer that your pool may not need, so be careful. Again, the test results will confirm.
- Acid is fine if your pH is high, but it won't clear algae or a bad smelling pool. That's a chlorinating issue - yep ... test results. :blah:
If you can't be there to add bleach each day to maintain the proper FC level, maybe someone who watches your place can? If not, you may eventually need to add a salt water generator or stenner-type pump to automatically add chlorine.
Stick around and ask questions. We'll do all we can to help. Nice to have you with us.
Being the "occasional" pool visitor (weekends & such), you might find consistent management a bit tricky. I can tell from some of your descriptions you manage your water differently that we do here at TFP. But I'll try to give you a few TFP pointers to get started and you can go from there:- #1 is having the right test kit. We recommend a TF-100 or Taylor K-2006C. Test strips are notoriously inaccurate, and so is that free store testing.
- With the proper test kit, we need to see a full set of water results
- Those bags of shock from the pool store have side effects by adding stabilizer that your pool may not need, so be careful. Again, the test results will confirm.
- Acid is fine if your pH is high, but it won't clear algae or a bad smelling pool. That's a chlorinating issue - yep ... test results. :blah:
If you can't be there to add bleach each day to maintain the proper FC level, maybe someone who watches your place can? If not, you may eventually need to add a salt water generator or stenner-type pump to automatically add chlorine.
Stick around and ask questions. We'll do all we can to help. Nice to have you with us.