Need help with my Free Chlorine

[videotonyk]

Hello...I am new the pool game and boy is it kicking my butt right now! I just bought a house with a 24x14 above groud oval pool that is 4 feet deep. The sellers closed before winter and this is my first time trying to open the pool.

I opened the pool on Saturday 5/18 and I am not able to maintain any Free Chlorine in the pool. I have the OTO tester kit as well as the test strips. Between Saturday and Monday I added 6lbs of Chlorinated Shock and 2lbs of Non-Chlorinated Shock on Tuesday. I have brushed the pool and used the vaccum. The pool water is crystal clear. The OTO test says my TC is 2. My recent strip test is as follows.

TC 3
FC 0
TA 80
PH 7.2
Hardiness is 250
CYA 50

I added 121oz of 8.75% bleach to the water tonight which brought the FC up to 3 but I tested again an hour later and the FC was back to zero. What am I doing wrong? Did I not properly "shock" the pool? The pool is in direct sunlight all day. Is something eating all the chlorine? The poor store told me that an FC reading of zero was ok to swim in. Another pool store told me that it could take 3 weeks for FC to "level out"

Please help!

[Charlie_R]

For the most meaningful testing, you need to buy the Taylor K-2006 pool test kit. Strips are notorious for being extremely inaccurate. Wile you are waiting for the K-2006, go to your local Wal-mart and get the HTH 6-way kit.

Without proper testing, you can't know what your stabilizer (CYA - cyanuric acid) level is, you won't know how much FC (free chlorine) you need to maintain.

For the experts here to be able to help you, they will need a full set of numbers obtained from a proper kit, but until you have one, the 6-way will get you started.

Please don't rely on pool store advice, most often their "advice" is tuned to selling you expensive chemical soup.

Check the stickies in this section http://www.poolforum.com/pf2/forumdisplay.php?133-Testing-and-Adjusting-Pool-Water-Chemistry for a lot of the info you will need to keep you pool in great shape.

I'm sure the experts here will be able to expand on what little I'm able to help with, it may take a bit of time though. In the mean time, read up on what you can do.

In spite of what my signature says, I DO have the K-2006. It is the BEST investment I've ever made in pool care!

[BigDave]

In addition to Charlie's sound advice I feel stongly the need disagree with the poolstore that told you FC of 0 was OK for swimming.