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Hear is an example from my personal experience that emphasizes how off pool stores testing is. I am/was new to pool management and the house I bought had an old neglected pool that we decided to bring back to life. 2 weeks of trying to get it into shape with pool stores advice and spent over a thousand dollars in chemicals. It was a long frustrating 2 weeks with long story I will skip for now. I found this site while researching what I should do. I ordered TF-100 but I am impatient and wanted to get started and went to pool store for water sample. Results came back with high PH, if I remember correctly 7.8 which is not horrible but to start SLAM ideally wanted 7.2. I understood I would need the TF-100 (or Taylor 2006) to do the proper chlorine test for the slam but thought surly pool store with their high tech equipment could get PH right. So poolstore sold me a bag of dry acid (I knew it would be cheaper with muriatic acid from box store, but the testing was free they need to make money too so I did not mind over paying a little, I wanted this ready for 4th of July). I do not remember how much he told me to add but I ran it through poolmath which told me to add half that amount. So I did, low and behold next day TF-100 arrived (only took a day and a half to get here regular shipping). I tested the PH with the kit it was 6.8 which is lowest the scale goes so it could (and was) be even lower. Again to make a long story short I had to eventually add 8 Lbs. of borax to get PH back to 7.2. So there is no way the reading of 7.8 was correct and it took me 2 days of adding and retesting to get back to 7.2 which is probably somewhere where it was before I added dry acid. That said it only took me 5 days to turn the swamp back to sparkling clear after I got my kit. That is why I wrote the book above stressing the proper kit. After that for my curiosity, I took a sample of my pool water to 3 different Pool Stores reasonably close to me, 2 of them were Leslie's so they would have the same type of testing equipment. All 3 tests came back different and differed with the TF-100. A little test you may want to try, if you have time to kill. Before you have the proper test kit in your hand the general advice hear is usually add half a gallon 8.25% bleach each night till you get your kit. Since you are a recent refill I believe your CYA is zero and this means sunlight will really eat up chlorine during sunny day. If we did poolmath correctly for your pool, 53 oz of 8.25% chlorine is about half gallon and should take your 12K gal. pool from 0 to 3 ppm chlorine. It surly would not hurt to have 6 ppm (I think, correct me if I am wrong Texas Splash, if CYA 0 could be a little high) so a gallon would not hurt to start especially if added half at night or AM and the other half mid day. Again after adding mix well by brushing. As I understand chlorine is heavier than water so sinks to bottom and while I do not think half gallon would hurt your new liner ( I was pouring 5 gal of 12.5% in my pool at once from advice from poolstore and think I got away with it), mixing (brushing) it well for further dilution as well as for sanitization is necessary. If you had ordered the kit a few days ago I am surprised you do not have it. If you have not ordered it, I would do it right away. It is the basis for everything they tell you. Since you did refill I am pretty sure you will need to add some CYA but we need accurate tests. Without it we are shooting in the dark and not too much better than poolstore and you may not be satisfied with the results. Also keep track of the amounts of anything you add to your pool it may help in the future. And do not add anything to your pool if you do not understand what it will do to your pool. Even if it is advice from here, just ask why then you get an education, and there may have been a communication error that you may straighten out. The experts here are usually pretty patient with us newbies. Good Luck I hope you have similar results as I did, I will follow the thread to see how you do.

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After typing I saw response above, looks like you have your kit, test post # and Texas Splash and other experts will get you on your way.
 
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