I'm On Week 6 and I just cant quite get it! Help!

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Why rush to start shocking without having the most essential tool: test kit to measure accurately FC and CC?
Pool school does not teach the virtues of patience, but maybe the cost of chemicals will, eventually.
 
I thought I had better jump on here and post an update for anyone who may be following.
I know you all didnt quite agree with the blindly dumping in bleach but it did work... and yes.... it did bleach my liner! BUT, I dont care because I have a beautiful pool full of crystal clear, sparkling water!!!

A NOTE TO ANY OTHER NEWBIES: Use the pool calculator to figure out how many gallons your pool is. My pool store told me mine was 20,000 gallons and I just believed them. My pool is actually 27400 gallons. Not knowing that number threw everything off and I was not successful with BBB or any pool store products because of that.

My K-2006 finally arrived today and I have done a thorough test but I have a problem!
Here are the readings:
CCL .5ppm
FCL .5ppm
PH 7.8
TA 250ppm
CH 170 ppm
CYA >30ppm

So my question is the CYA. I understand the PH because it was perfect at 7.5 yesterday morning but we have swam, cannon-balled, dived and splashed all day for the last 2 days. I did the CYA test twice because both times, after following the directions very closely, I am able to completely fill the tube and still clearly see the black dot. The calculator says I need to add "stabilizer". Is this something from the pool store? Where do I get it? What is the "cheap" equivalent? Which is better, powder or liquid? BTW, the Walmart test kit says my CYA is 60. Which test is right?


Anyhow, I am THRILLED with the crystal clear water. It feels great and it smells great too. I know its really low on CL right now, but thats because we have been in it all day!

I am off to add my 52 oz. of bleach as per the calculator and 58 oz of acid for the PH. After I bring the PH down, I will run the fountain tomorrow to bring it back up and hope this takes care of the high TA.

I am absolutely loving his whole process! I love being in control and NOT completely reliant on the Pool Store.

AND I LOVE TFP!!! YOU GUYS/ GALS ARE AWESOME!!

I have invested right at 300.00 so far this year using BBB but I will not count the fist 190.00 because I did not have a full understanding of when, what, where and how...also I had the wrong amount of water to start with! SO it appears from this point forward my pool will use approx. 50oz of bleach per day of use and less on nonuse [rare]. So , about 1.00 a day and less than 5 min time. Im guessing my total investment will be around 200.00 for the season! Awesome huh? Just for grins, while my pool was shocking and we couldnt use it, I took my test bottle (it still had water in it from before shocking) over to the pool store for a free test. I didnt pay attention to the numbers on the test, but the total of the items they wanted to sell me (including 50# of shock, algaecide, clarifier, filter cleaner, body oil remover, iron remover and 100 # of chlorine tabs with stabilizer) was $540.00. Then they wanted me to bring back another water sample in one week!
I RAN FAST AND FAR!

If anyone cares too, I would love some advice on moving on to Borates and salt! I am disappointed though, that the very expensive Taylor K-2006 test kit does not test for either! Not sure what to do about that, yet.

The pictures below are for Newbies like myself....I thought it might help someone to see inside K-2006 and then see its comparison to a WalMart HTH kit. The other pic is day 2 of the shocking and you can see how far it came in just 2 days!


IMG_0131[1] by FotoFein, on Flickr


IMG_0129[1] by FotoFein, on Flickr


IMG_0126[1] by FotoFein, on Flickr
 
Welcome back, I wondered what happened to you. To get you CYA up you can either stop by the pool store and get some stabilizer or you can use any leftover pucks you might have sitting around and use those up to slowly raise your CYA. I keep my CYA at 50 and that seems to work for me. I keep my FC between 4-7ppm. Make sure your pool passes the overnight test and has a CC of less then 0.5 before you stop shocking. One thing I do highly recommend is a SpeedStir for your test kit. Once you have one, you will wonder how you go along without it! There are several good postings here regarding borates but that's not something I can do because my dogs think the pool is a giant water bowl.
 
My dogs drink out of the pool and swim in it. If borates are bad for dogs then I wont do it. I love my dogs more than the pool!

I have decided to keep my FC at 5. Last night around 10 pm I added the bleach (per the calculator) to bring my FC to 5. I tested this morning and my FC is 3.5 and CC is .5. However, I failed to test last night after adding the bleach to bring it up to FC 5...so I have no idea what it was last night as compared to this morning. I will do the overnight test again tonight and I will do it corrrectly!

Right now I still have perfectly sparkling pool and we are headed outside now!
 
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