SO glad I found this website!! On the road to recovery here now!!
:-D
The poolcalculator.com is Great! The TF100 test kit is on my list now - hopefully next month (just can not do that right this minute).
I am certainly interested in not having to be tied to a pool store 2 hours away. Problem with any of the pool supply places (sorry, maybe what y'all are) is that they are always trying to sell their products and it just gets to be too many chemicals and too costly :-\
Nope, we are not here to sell anything. We are here to help. But, we do recommend only two or three test kits.
Found that I can get the Borax at the local HEB grocery (assume you mean just plain ol' Borax powder?)
Yep, 20 MULE TEAM BORAX from the laundry aisle. You can see a pic of the box in the Visual Enclyclopedia in Pool School.
I thought it was good to circulate for a while after addition of one thing, test again before adding something else
Exactly, take it slow.
(just added 38.75 lbs of bicarb.- baking soda ) The calculator says the baking soda will also raise the ph. Obviously, I have never really grasped how all this works :-\ We do have 1.5 horse Hayward pump, older Pentair, Tagelus sand filter that I'd have to look up what size. So if I can keep the pool healthy with supplies from 'the locals', I can forget pool frog ?
Well, the pool frog adds copper in your pool and we do NOT recommend that for any reason. Copper can stain pool and turn blonde hair green
We are in the Texas hill country - can our area be a lot different than what you normally deal with in pool treatment?
Nope, we're all about the same! In fact, we have two mods that live in Texas :-D and I'm sure they'll be around in a while
Keep us updated esp with the pH and TA.