I'm thrilled to find this site! Other sites I have found have so little use that questions go unanswered for months.
I look forward to the education from you and your other users.
This is a very long post - I put all the details here in my Intro so I won't need as much info in my questions in the forums, I will just refer to this post for the details
I bought a House last winter - and got a really nice pool with it. ( My first pool)
For the first many months I only saw the Winter Cover, and some blurry pictures the old owners had of the pool.
The Owners husband passed away unexpectedly, and she had no knowledge about anything to do with the pool - So it was just us and the Internet this first year.
The Pool
20 x 40 Inground Lazy L Concrete Painted Approx 20 years old
3ft shallow end 8 ft cereal bowl deep end ( 25000 gal ??? I guess)
The Pool Shed contained the following when I opened it:
2, Half full 5 gal buckets of Bromine Tabs
1/2 bottle Qt - Metal and Stain remover
1 Gal pail of Alkalinity Increaser (* yes increaser - read on)
1/3 Bottle Qt of Algecide
1 Gal pail of Stabilizer.
and 2 empty cans of the paint last used to paint the pool (several years ago)
Opening -
Winter cover was filled with water and leaves - pumped the water off for hours until I realized the level of the pool was dropping, I realized the cover leaked and would never completely empty. We pulled the cover to the shallow end and eventually pulled it off but dumped a lot of water and leaves in the process.
Initial inspection - Water as green as the deepest ocean, and no sign of bottom - not even the first step of the stairs.
Step 1 - Leaf rake for hours - worms - frogs and lots of leaves and twigs.
Step 2 - reassemble the filter and pump, lubed the O rings cleaned the threads, remove plugs.
Step 3 - raise water level to test out filter ( hoping a vacuum might speed up the cleaning)
Step 4 - Test filter - Dome Top was cross threaded and would not open -not sure if it had sand in it or not.
Filter began working fine - yes it had sand. But the filter sucked a LOT of air.
Step 5 - Vaccum to waste - till filter basket filled (every 10 - 15 minutes) Surprisingly the pool began looking beter.
Waited a week (work out of town) For sludge to settle
Step 6 - repeat - Leaf rake, then vacuum
Step 7 1st water test (Test Strips) TA - way off chart, Calcium way off charts, Bromine 0 PH off charts low
Step 8 (Filter has no bromninator) Filled floating Brominator with tablets, Shocked Pool, added Algecide, added rust and stain remover. Test again No change in any readings. Brush and vacuum once daily from here on sometimes twice
Step 9 Go back to the internet for Info.
Step 10 - Bought 3 gal of Muriatic Acid to lower alkalinity - Used 2 and waited, brush and vacuum - Shock again!
By now the green is gone, the water is still very cloudy, and I can barely make out the Main drain, I now see brown stains all over the bottom of the pool.
From this point on each day brought improvements - each chemical treatment (shock, algecide or floculant) always caused clouding of the water, but it would clear a bit by the next day - never being crystal clear always hazy.
I had Both valves replaced (Skimmer/vacuum and Main Drain) the skimmer now does not suck any air, the main drain sucks air after the pumping for about 5 minutes. I suspect I have a leak in a pipe somewhere. I run the filter for 7 hours starting at 11pm till about 6am then again for 6 hours from 11am till 5pm. I usually also turn it on when working on the pool early afternoons or when we would swim. I am out of town 4 days a week and then home for 3, so for those 4 days it is just the filter running, then for the 3 days I spend hours each day cleaning
Total alkalinity never dopped much below 200, calcium remains sky high, and I finally resorted to punching holes in a 5 gal bucket with about 2" deep Bromine tabs to try to bring up the bromine. Bromine tests Ok 5ppm after shocking but drops off soon after). The water eventually cleared up - can see the drain fine details on the bottom of the deep end are fine, but at night with the light on I see millions of tiny reflections in the light. Then there were those pesty brown stains. I kept trying the metal and scale chemical, but only shocking and brushing seemed to help but not eliminate them. After a good shock, the stains would be lighter and gone from some areas - then I noticed - everywhere the stains appear there are calcium deposits all over the bottom of the pool, they bleach out the stain, but in a few days they turn brown again, and its time to shock again.
The final Issue was paint chipping - my filter basket is always full of little flecks of paint, and the bottom shows more and more little paintless spots. Next spring a new paint job is on order.
If you read all this - WOW - Thanks! any advice is appreciated,
I look forward to the education from you and your other users.
This is a very long post - I put all the details here in my Intro so I won't need as much info in my questions in the forums, I will just refer to this post for the details
I bought a House last winter - and got a really nice pool with it. ( My first pool)
For the first many months I only saw the Winter Cover, and some blurry pictures the old owners had of the pool.
The Owners husband passed away unexpectedly, and she had no knowledge about anything to do with the pool - So it was just us and the Internet this first year.
The Pool
20 x 40 Inground Lazy L Concrete Painted Approx 20 years old
3ft shallow end 8 ft cereal bowl deep end ( 25000 gal ??? I guess)
The Pool Shed contained the following when I opened it:
2, Half full 5 gal buckets of Bromine Tabs
1/2 bottle Qt - Metal and Stain remover
1 Gal pail of Alkalinity Increaser (* yes increaser - read on)
1/3 Bottle Qt of Algecide
1 Gal pail of Stabilizer.
and 2 empty cans of the paint last used to paint the pool (several years ago)
Opening -
Winter cover was filled with water and leaves - pumped the water off for hours until I realized the level of the pool was dropping, I realized the cover leaked and would never completely empty. We pulled the cover to the shallow end and eventually pulled it off but dumped a lot of water and leaves in the process.
Initial inspection - Water as green as the deepest ocean, and no sign of bottom - not even the first step of the stairs.
Step 1 - Leaf rake for hours - worms - frogs and lots of leaves and twigs.
Step 2 - reassemble the filter and pump, lubed the O rings cleaned the threads, remove plugs.
Step 3 - raise water level to test out filter ( hoping a vacuum might speed up the cleaning)
Step 4 - Test filter - Dome Top was cross threaded and would not open -not sure if it had sand in it or not.
Filter began working fine - yes it had sand. But the filter sucked a LOT of air.
Step 5 - Vaccum to waste - till filter basket filled (every 10 - 15 minutes) Surprisingly the pool began looking beter.
Waited a week (work out of town) For sludge to settle
Step 6 - repeat - Leaf rake, then vacuum
Step 7 1st water test (Test Strips) TA - way off chart, Calcium way off charts, Bromine 0 PH off charts low
Step 8 (Filter has no bromninator) Filled floating Brominator with tablets, Shocked Pool, added Algecide, added rust and stain remover. Test again No change in any readings. Brush and vacuum once daily from here on sometimes twice
Step 9 Go back to the internet for Info.
Step 10 - Bought 3 gal of Muriatic Acid to lower alkalinity - Used 2 and waited, brush and vacuum - Shock again!
By now the green is gone, the water is still very cloudy, and I can barely make out the Main drain, I now see brown stains all over the bottom of the pool.
From this point on each day brought improvements - each chemical treatment (shock, algecide or floculant) always caused clouding of the water, but it would clear a bit by the next day - never being crystal clear always hazy.
I had Both valves replaced (Skimmer/vacuum and Main Drain) the skimmer now does not suck any air, the main drain sucks air after the pumping for about 5 minutes. I suspect I have a leak in a pipe somewhere. I run the filter for 7 hours starting at 11pm till about 6am then again for 6 hours from 11am till 5pm. I usually also turn it on when working on the pool early afternoons or when we would swim. I am out of town 4 days a week and then home for 3, so for those 4 days it is just the filter running, then for the 3 days I spend hours each day cleaning
Total alkalinity never dopped much below 200, calcium remains sky high, and I finally resorted to punching holes in a 5 gal bucket with about 2" deep Bromine tabs to try to bring up the bromine. Bromine tests Ok 5ppm after shocking but drops off soon after). The water eventually cleared up - can see the drain fine details on the bottom of the deep end are fine, but at night with the light on I see millions of tiny reflections in the light. Then there were those pesty brown stains. I kept trying the metal and scale chemical, but only shocking and brushing seemed to help but not eliminate them. After a good shock, the stains would be lighter and gone from some areas - then I noticed - everywhere the stains appear there are calcium deposits all over the bottom of the pool, they bleach out the stain, but in a few days they turn brown again, and its time to shock again.
The final Issue was paint chipping - my filter basket is always full of little flecks of paint, and the bottom shows more and more little paintless spots. Next spring a new paint job is on order.
If you read all this - WOW - Thanks! any advice is appreciated,
Welcome to the site. Others will be by later for comments on the what-to-do-stuff. Again, welcome, you have come to the right place to get help. :-D 
). If you get your calcium down and your alkalinity is still high, then you can add muriatic acid till your ph is at 7.0 and aerate the water (you can turn up your return jets to bubble on top of the water, or use a fountain) this will lower the alkalinity while raising the ph. When the ph reaches 7.4 you have to add more acid to continue the process. The stains may be some kind of algae - I say this because they lighten up with the bromine,and when the bromine cgoes down the stains get darker. Since your pool is not holding bromine., I don't know if it is getting used up fighting algae, or you need to have something like cya to keep the sun from using up the bromine. To get rid of algae, you must take the sanitizer up to shock, and hold it there until the sanitizer holds overnight -at least this is what you do with chlorine - so I am sorry if I a wrong about the bromine 
Hopefully someone will answer the bromine question :?: Anyway, another way to test the stain is to crush up some vitamin C tablets and put them in a sock and rub them on the stain - if it lightens up then it is probably a mineral (metal) stain, and can be removed with ascorbic acid (vitamin C). If the stain is old, the metal remover will not take the stains off the plaster - they are to sequester the metals that are in the water - they will not take the stain off the surface of the pool - you need to use the ascorbic acid first, and then the metal sequestering agent to bind with the metals to keep them in suspension so they don't fall out and land on the surface of the pool again. In my opinion you have to really kill all fo the algae before you can get clear water, and you have to get the alkalinity and calcium in check too. The paint chipping off the pool is probably due to the pool sitting so long unattended, and will need to be resurfaced when you can. I would reccommend having it resurfaced instead of painting, and when you do, you may want to switch from bromine to chlorine.Here is some info I found on the web, but it doesn;t mention cya for bromine, so if anyone knows the answer :?: :?: 