New Pool Owner

[jennandlucy]

I am a new pool owner and I don't know a lot about them. It is a 18x36 inground salt water pool. It is brand new. The people that put it in told me to bring in water every two weeks for testing. At first, they had me add salt, stabilizer and calcium. Then on the third visit, they told me that my free chlorine was way to high. They told me to cut my chlorinator to 10% for a few days to bring in down, then gradually bring it up a little bit. I turned it down and then turned it back up to 25% 2 days ago. I took water in today and they are telling me that I need stabilizer and calcium again. Can anyone tell me what causes this? Am I doing something wrong, or are they just trying to sell product? Thank you for any help in understanding this.

[waste]

Hi and WELCOME to The Forum!!

What usually causes this is a combination of greed and ignorance on the part of the pool store. S-)

A contributing factor is your own ignorance :sad:

However, this can be corrected :D

My prescription to you is to get to know your pool (we'll help and answer [U]any[U] questions you have). To do this you need to read through The Forum (& the Pool Solutions site) to get a basic understanding of what's going on with any pool - viewing the 'stickies' in any area of interest should be enough to start.

Next you need to get a GOOD test kit and test the water for yourself (there are links in the Mods and Pooldoc's signatures) [unless you've been backwashing every other day, you shouldn't need more cya (stabilizer) and calcium every 2 weeks]

I know that it's intimidating at first but, you can quickly and easily learn how to care for your pool with a good test kit and the knowledge we proffer.

[jennandlucy]

I will get busy on the research. I do feel overwhelmed and at the mercy of what the pool company tells me.

I am not backwashing every other day. Their instructions were to do it once a week. Again, I have been living by their instructions. My cheap test strips show that everything is in order. I will look into purchasing a GOOD test kit.

Thanks for your help.