Basic details: I have a 18 x 36 in ground pool with steps, about 24K gallons i think. It came with the house, we bought the place in 1999, and I don't have a great clue about maintaining things. We replaced the liner last year, so the pool was refilled completely in late July.
I found this site a few days ago and have been researching some stuff.
I'm using test strips and they read PH 6.8, Alk 40, FC 0, CYA 0 and CH was pretty low as well. I added about 18 or so lbs of Calcium Monday and that is now registering 100. I added 20 lbs of baking soda today and my ALK seems to be around 80ish. The 1.42 gallons of 6% bleach i added today didn't last that long... So I've added maybe 3 lbs of CYA since I didn't have much to begin with.
So I never really got all the new pool water situated correctly last summer. My question is what should I focus on first. I was thinking ALK, which is why the bakinf soda and then PH. Then deal with CYA completely and start the shock process. My pool is cloudy and I just took the cover off 5 days ago. Years past it'd be crystal clear when I took the cover off.
I found this site a few days ago and have been researching some stuff.
I'm using test strips and they read PH 6.8, Alk 40, FC 0, CYA 0 and CH was pretty low as well. I added about 18 or so lbs of Calcium Monday and that is now registering 100. I added 20 lbs of baking soda today and my ALK seems to be around 80ish. The 1.42 gallons of 6% bleach i added today didn't last that long... So I've added maybe 3 lbs of CYA since I didn't have much to begin with.
So I never really got all the new pool water situated correctly last summer. My question is what should I focus on first. I was thinking ALK, which is why the bakinf soda and then PH. Then deal with CYA completely and start the shock process. My pool is cloudy and I just took the cover off 5 days ago. Years past it'd be crystal clear when I took the cover off.