daily chlorine dosing question

[Mayjong]

hey all-
let me first just say I love, Love, LOVE this site. I'm so glad to be free of the pool store!

anyway, just getting everything stable now, pool looks great. I have a couple of adjustments to make, but nothing big. my question is on my daily (liquid!) chlorine dose.
I'm wondering if there is a "rule of thumb" I can look to, or do I need to test daily for a while to figure it out, then base my dosing on that?

 

[Richard320]

Test daily until you can guess accurately what you'll see before the first drop leaves the bottle. You'll probably spot the pattern within a few weeks. At that point, you can just dump in the usual amount every day and start testing every other day. Don't be too hasty. You can buy a lot of test reagents for what the bleach to do a SLAM will cost.

 

[JVTrain]

Testing daily is the best route to knowing what your pool needs each day. For the first week or so, I'd recommend doing the FC/CC test with the FAS-DPD reagents just to get the hang of it and to feel confident in your chlorine levels without the guessing about which color you match in the color block TC test. Do that test as well to "calibrate" your eyes so you know what 3 TC, 4 TC and 5 TC look like when you know what it is from the FAS-DPD test. Also do the pH test daily. Do the TA test a few times as well. CH and CYA don't need to be done unless you want to get more comfortable with the CYA test.

Once you do that for a week or so, you'll know what your pool consumes for chlorine each day. Keep in mind, your CYA level, sun exposure and bather load all come into play. Posting your test results each time you do them here is a great way to document them and get suggestions if needed. If you don't post them here, keep a log of your own at home for a while.