new pool owner (thanks to girlfriend)

[beepington]

Hi all, My girlfriend recently bought a 8foot bestway fast set pool for a very good price (new not 2nd hand) with the pool came a 330 gallon per hour pump and a chem floater with 20 chlorine tablets also a cover, now she has filled this pool twice WITHOUT the pump or floater and both times ive ended up coming round with the jet wash to clean the thing, now heres my problem, after reading post after post about ph levels, shocking and bleach ive gotta say im kinda stumped, so really here for a bit of advice, ive managed to stop her from refilling the pool a third time much to the children's dismay, what would be the best way to go about refilling the pool and keeping it from going green again.

Thanks in advance for any help,

Beepington.

 

[Bama Rambler]

Welcome to TFP.

From the way you write and the bestway brand I'd guess that you're from across the big pond.
Are you filling the pool with chlorinated public water?
I'll assume that the floaters have Trichlor in them. Is there an adjustment on them where you can adjust the amount the tablets are dissolved?

Do you have any type of test kit?

 

[beepington]

Hi and thanks for the welcome,
yes we are from the UK so we are not really big on the whole pool thing lol, the water used is not chlorinated as far as i know and as for the floaters she hasn't used them as of yet as she said she was afraid it would be harmful to her kids, which is understandable, as for the tablets they came in a plain white tub with 20g Multifuntional Chlorine Tablets written on the side the floater is adjustable. We don't have a test kit.

Thanks again.

 

[Bama Rambler]

The first thing to do is get a basic test kit that tests chlorine and pH.
Then learn to use the Pool Calculator. Especially the "Effects of adding chemicals" section.
Once you have a handle on that you can use it to figure what your FC should be based on how many tablets you've used. Once it gets too high due to the CYA rising, just dump the water and start over. You may even make it the entire season without having to drain it.

Start off by trying to maintain 2 ppm FC using the floater and raise that as you use up the pucks. Just keep up with how many you use and add that to the Pool Calc so you'll know what your FC should be based on how much CYA you're adding.

 

[beepington]

ok, would this be a suitable test kit?, http://tinyurl.com/oejehtb, or would i need something better?

 

[Isaac-1]

It would probably do, but in general we prefer the drop based test kits over the tablet ones, I have used tablet kits before, but it has been many years, as I recall they are a bit annoying getting the tablets to dissolve, etc. Take a look at the Taylor brand test kits on ebay uk also, there is a basic K-1001 dpd 2 way kit that is cheaper than the one you listed and will probably let you do more tests. I would consider a 2 way test to be minimal for a pool like this where you can dump the water if things go too bad, however choices are likely limited in your market, and you do have a short swim season.

In addition to this I would probably suggest using bleach /liquid chlorine for initial chlorine dosing as the slow dissolve trichlor tablets will likely be too slow to get to reasonably FC levels before algae has a chance to take hold.

Also keep a log of all dry chlorine (including type dichlor, trichlor, and avoid any cal-hypo) use, this way you can track and estimate your CYA level and know your current FC /CYA ratio target, see pool school link in the upper right as the basic test kits have no way to test for CYA.

Ike