how can I adjust the water balance?

[lacdg]

Hello to everybody,
I decided to give your forum a try, before I'll mess up my pool water again. My husband and i we purchased a house with above ground pool (24 feet round pool with 14,000 gallons water). It's the second time when we had to drain the water because improper balance of water witch caused us a lot of problems .At this moment , after we fill up the pool, I added 1.5lb hth stabilizer and conditioner, and my readings are the following:
FC 0.15
PH 7.7
TA 101
TH 147
CYA 9
My question is, How can I adjust the water balance, before I'll mess it up again?

The readings were made at the pool store, I only own the 6 way test strip.

[AnnaK]

Welcome to the Pool Forum!

1. You need to get some sanitizer in your pool as quickly as possible. The easiest and least expensive product is regular, unscented 6% household bleach. 1 gallon of 6% bleach (128 oz) add 6 ppm of chlorine per 10, 000 gallons of pool volume. Until we've helped you fully balance your water please add 96 oz of bleach each evening.

2. Your pool also needs stabilizer. Please purchase 4 pounds of 100% CYA (also known as cyanuric acid, stabilizer, balancer). Make sure that's what it says on the label. Put 1/2 of that amount in an old sock and tie it so it's suspended in front of the return jet that goes into the pool so that the water flowing over the sock helps to dissolve the granules. Squeeze the sock a few times during the day to help the product dissolve. It may take a day or so to dissolve. Once the sock is empty, add the other half of the product. The best place to buy this is at a pool store.

Another way to get stabilizer AND sanitizer (chlorine) in your water is with di-chlor. If you have access to a Sam's Club, buy their 24lb pack of 1# bags of 100% dichlor shock. Each bag will add about 7 ppm of chlorine, and about 6 ppm of stabilizer, per 10K gallons of water. Otherwise, order dichlor from Amazon:
Kem-Tek Dichlor 22 lbs (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0030BEHZA/poolbooks)We do NOT recommend buying dichlor locally, otherwise, at least until you are an EXPERT reader of chemical labels. The chlorinating pool chemicals sold at Walmart, Kmart, Costco, and most other local stores are diluted blends, sometimes with copper and other products with bad side-effects.

3. Pick up a couple boxes of 20 Mule Team borax in the laundry aisle of your grocery store or at Walmart. You may need to adjust your pH once all the CYA has been dissolved.

4. Purchase a test kit. You will need to test your water daily for chlorine and pH and test strips are not acceptable. Having a good test kit makes pool care easier for EVERYONE. A good test kit means a kit that can test chlorine from 0 - 25 ppm, pH, alkalinity, calcium hardness, and stabilizer with reasonable accuracy. Test strips (AKA 'guess-strips' ) do NOT meet this standard. Some pool store testing is accurate; most is not. The ONLY way you'll know whether your pool store is accurate or bogus, is by testing accurately your own self. On the other hand, pool store 'computer' dosing recommendations are NEVER trustworthy -- ignore them. They are designed to sell more chemicals than you need, and WILL cause many pool problems.

We recommend the Taylor K-2006 test kit, which meets the requirements above, for many reasons. The HTH 6-way drops kit is a great starter kit, and is compatible with the K2006 (it's made by Taylor). Test kit info page (http://www.poolforum.com/pf2/showthread.php?16551)

A temporary alternative to the Taylor test kit is the HTH 6-way DROPS test kit, which is compatible with the Taylor K2006. These are available at some Walmart stores. Test the pool as soon and you can, and post the results. If you get the 6-way kit, ALSO test the water you FILL the pool with, especially if it's a well, and post THOSE results as well.

5. It's much easier to answer your questions when we know something about your pool. We often spend the first few posts back and forth collecting information. So, please complete our Pool Chart form -- it takes about 30 seconds, but will save much more than that.

Pool Chart Entry Form (http://goo.gl/cNPUO)
Pool Chart Results (http://goo.gl/PXaLu)

We realize that all of this may seem a little overwhelming. It gets easier, really. Read as much as you can here and on our sister site Pool Solutions (http://www.poolsolutions.com/) and you'll soon understand the relationship a few household products have to your pool and to each other.

[waterbear]

Your pool store is also testing with strips and probaboly using a strip reader (TH instead of CH is the giveaway since strips cannot test calcium hardness and total hardness is useless measurement)
If you want to get your water in balance you need good test numbers so get yourself a good test kit. The one we recommend because it is the best value for the money AND easy to use is a Taylor K-2006
IF the Walmart in your area carries the HTH 6 way test kit then you can pick that up and get started right away but you should stilll invest in the K-2006.
The main thing you have to do irght now is get some chlorine in there to keep it from turning green. I would also say that you need to bring up the stabilizer (CYA) BUT strip testing of stabilizer is really bad so I do not trust your results of 9 ppm so we will just worry about chlorine until you can get better test results. (although 1.5 lbs of stabilizer should raise you up to aboug 12 ppm so it is probably in the ballpark. If that is the sum and total of the CYA added go ahead and add another 3 lbs. This should get you to about 40 ppm, a good starting place. Pour it SLOWLY into the skimmer with the pump running, run the pump continously for the next 24 to 48 hours, do NOT clean your filter for a week and do not bother to test the CYA for a week)
In your pool every gallon of 6% laundry bleach (plain, unscented, unthickend, etc) will raise your FC by aout 4.5 ppm so get a gallon of bleach in there right away. Test your FC level (your strips are ok for this for now but get a better test kit ASAP since the only test that strips really give you any info about is whether you have chlorine or not) and keep the FC above 3 ppm at all times! Until you get some CYA in there it means that you might need to add chlorine more than once a day.

Once you get a test kit post a full set of test results and if you have any problems with the testing please post your qustions, we exist to help people like you!