2nd Year Pool Owner, Still completely clueless

[Alicia1587]

Last spring we bought our house and with it came our pool. Last spring we opened to a swamp and following our local pool store’s somewhat broad recommendations we managed to get the water clear and pretty much problem free all summer.

Again this year we opened to a swamp. (No pool cover, but on the list of to dos.) Tried to follow the general procedure that we did last year with getting the pool open, but I haven’t been able to get the water clear. I have been working on getting the pool open since the beginning of April. After trying different things and hoping for the best, I bought a cheap Clorox test kit that works with an app on my phone. Having never bothered to learn about the chemistry of my pool I thought it would be a good starting point. I’ve been trying to get the pool chemicals balanced for about a week and a half while reading up on this page. I’ve noticed that the Clorox test kit does not provide as precise readings as I need for cya and doesn’t even show ccs.

My husband and I also changed out the sand in our filter yesterday since we had no idea how old the sand was.

Finally ordered my Taylor-k2006c and hopefully it will be here by Friday. Is there somewhere on here with directions on preforming the different tests for the Taylor-k2006c?

This mornings readings off of my Clorox test strips show:
TH: 0 (can’t get TH to hold and stay)
TC: 5
FC: 3
PH: 7.8
TA: 120
CYA: 0 (also can’t get this number to hold)

Should I worry about trying to raise TH until I get my new kit in? I think it isn’t super important with a vinyl liner. Where should I try to keep my TC while waiting on the kit? Should I try to lower pH? For the past week I have only been adding liquid chlorine. (I am learning a little.?)

 

[Mr Bruce]

I would just add a little liquid chlorine every day like you are doing until your test kit arrives. We don't trust test strips very much at all.

Your K-2006c should have directions with it, but here are some very detailed directions if you would like to be reading up Extended Test Kit Directions

Once your test kit arrives do a test and post the results here like this:

FC
CC
pH
TA
CH
CYA
Temp

And we can go from there! Welcome to TFP.

 

[Alicia1587]

Taylor K-2006c switch up

I’ve been anxiously awaiting my Taylor k-2006c kit to come in the mail today only to open it and see that I was mistakenly sent k-2005 instead. I’ve contacted the company I bought my kit from, but in the meanwhile I decided to use the k-2005 kit to at least get some accurate information. My test results are

TC 10+
FC 10+
CC ??
PH 7.8
TA 150
CH 190
CYA 60

I’d like to at least make some
movement towards clearing up my water. I think I need to drop my pH to around 7.2 first. Other than just adding small amounts of bleach everyday is there anything else I can do while I wait for this to be straightened out?

 

[Mr Bruce]

If your FC really is over 10 the pH test is invalid. Wait for the good chlorine test to confirm. Yes, add a little bleach every day with the pump running until it comes.