No free chlorine, waiting on test kit

[Christineann11]

Just stumbled across this wonderful site today after suspecting we should start to do our own research, independent of the pool store. Pool was opened one week ago. Free chlorine continues to test at 0.0 despite shocking it three days in a row. My husband put in 5 gallons of liquid chlorine last night. I have ordered the test kit that was recommended but it will take until at least the end of next week. In the meantime, we want to be as proactive as possible to prevent algae. Stabilizer is showing 30-50 on two different kinds of test strips (not ideal, I now know).
Latest numbers from the pool store:
FC 0
Total Chlorine 2.28
PH 7.4
Alk 139

So we have removed chlorine tabs from the chlorinator and will stock up on liquid chlorine. Should we start draining our pool while we wait for the test kit or does it look like we are in more of a SLAM situation? Help! Please and thank you!

 

[IceShadow]

You shouldn’t need to drain unless your CYA is very high. 30-50 isn’t very high, but let’s wait and see what the test kit shows when you get it. 5 gallons could be a lot depending on strength. I’d recommend just adding 5ppm worth of chlorine daily until the kit arrives. You don’t want to go crazy and end up over-chlorinating.

 

[Christineann11]

You shouldn’t need to drain unless your CYA is very high. 30-50 isn’t very high, but let’s wait and see what the test kit shows when you get it. 5 gallons could be a lot depending on strength. I’d recommend just adding 5ppm worth of chlorine daily until the kit arrives. You don’t want to go crazy and end up over-chlorinating.

Thank you so much for your reply! This is a total newbie question, but how do we determine 5 ppm? The liquid chlorine was 10%.

 

[duraleigh]

Use PoolMath. There is a new, slick working app online or you can link to the old PoolMath at the bottom of this page

 

[IceShadow]

What duraleigh said - you either use the link to the old page at the bottom or the app. You put in the size of your pool, you put 0 for current FC, and 5 for desired, and the strength of the chlorine you're adding, and it figures out how much to add and tells you.