Salt also needs to be fully dissolved for at least 24 hours. Best to start up with 40ppm CYA in a sock as it fills and just squish it frequently and stir. By the time the pool is full, it could be nearly all squished out. Unlike bleach, it won't damage the pool if not fully mixed.
I really like how you're her asking questions ahead of time. I hope you find this helpful.
The following assumes you've got a proper test kit for you new pool. It assumes you desire a sparkling beautiful clear pool from the first moment you fill it. So you have your kit in hand. K?
(side note: you can test your water at the tap if you want a head start on this)
- [list:3ut2s9kl]First of all, get all the wrinkles out before you've got a few inches of water in the pool. It's far easier to do the less water there is. That's a hands and knees thing. And remember, no matter how perfect the floor is when you start, you will see wrinkles after it's full. It just is... (they're good at catching heavy debris actually).
Before you get out of the pool, grab a sample.
You can test your water for pH, TA, and CH right now. Go ahead and do it. Visit Pool Calculator. See if you might need to adjust any of those and plan ahead.
As soon as your pool is half full, add half the chlorine (40ppm CYA = 7ppm maximum FC - use Pool Calculator for full volume of the pool) slowly and stir very well with a skimmer or just get in and thrash around wading. Your pump should be ready by now. When you have enough water to start the pump, add the rest of the chlorine and test the pH again just to be sure (if anything changed between half and full, it'll be pH). Some fill water is very high pH (mine is 8.2 sometimes), some is high alkalinity. If pH is between 7.0 and 7.8, leave it alone for now. Report back here with your test results and assumed CYA level.
Did I mention that you're squishing that sock with CYA in it every now and again? It should be nearly gone by now unless your pool fills in less than 4 hours.
No worries about chlorine, you added what you need. The world is good. Your pump is running, pool is clean, has no wrinkles yet, and sparkles.
Time to add the salt. Using pool calculator, calculate from 0 to the recommended ppm for your pool. Broadcast the salt into the pool, and brush it around to dissolve.
Now, test your pool for chlorine. If it's below the maximum, re-dose to maximum with bleach.
We assume it's the end of the day now. Let the kids swim. You're good. Run the pump/filter full time. Go have a drink. Sleep. You made a pool. It's a clean, safe pool. You did good.
You don't have to worry tomorrow morning. Kids can swim. Test if you like before the sun hits the pool. See if you lost much chlorine overnight. I bet you didn't lose much, if any. Leave the pool, or talk to us here about your pH, TA, and CH if you want to adjust those. Or wing it cuz you read pool school and know what to do. Some adjustments can wait if they're not wild crazy out of whack. Relax.
End of the day, test your water. (not CYA, no reason to). Replace the chlorine you lost back to maximum with bleach, drink, sleep.
Day two. Same as before. Let people swim.
Put the rest of the CYA into a sock, and squish it frequently.
Sometime after they're done and after the sun is off the pool, start the SWG and set it for 4 hours. If you're up 4 hours later, test the pool. You're looking for a result of 7-8ppm. If you're in that range, good. 4 hours is enough to generate a day's worth of chlorine for you. If not, add or reduce the SWG run time as needed and run another cycle right away. Test when SWG turns off. Rinse, and repeat. Determine how many hours your SWG needs to run to produce a day's worth of chlorine (2-4ppm on average, I go with 4ppm if I'm in a guessing mood).
Once you know how many hours your SWG needs to run, you can let it go whenever. Apparently running the SWG during the day works as well.
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SWG's should come with bleach startup directions so people would stop calling them reaking out that their SWG can't make enough chlorine.
All this being said, the filter that comes with the pool is not good enough. I functioned ok with two of those babies running full time on one pool but I'm now converted to the sand filter and I love it. I haven't had to vacuum in days. Actually everything that was on the floor, is now gone. GONE! All I did was brush it up into suspension. This pool was uncovered all winter, with gallons of rain (this spring set a record for rain around here, check my location) and junk fallen into it up till two weeks ago when I officially opened. I freakin love this sand filter!
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I've run with the cartridge filters for years. A few without BBB, and two full seasons of BBB without a SWG. The number of cartridges I've cleaned since I hooked up the sand filter is... zero. And that's not because I don't have a cartridge filter on the pool, because I do. It runs my skimmer full time and it's skimming like a boss a week later without any cleaning. I'm totally running it till it stops skimming. Something I've seen in < 5 hours on a walmart cartridge. It's been nearly a week now. Still skimming like a badazz nary a leaf or anything falling to the floor of the pool.
Right... so there you go. Level your pool. Level it 1000%. You'll be fine. And plan to upgrade the filter. If you can afford it, just do it. You can function without it, but I'll never say it can be done without a second pump/filter and lots of management. I did it. Can be done. Get two cheapo Intex pumps if you don't upgrade.
