How best to start with new water?

Inground custom sport pool, Water-Maid Chlorinator, New Vinyl liner with new water, Tech thought it would be about 28,000 gallons but I thought a little smaller. I will know very close today as it is almost full and I wrote down my meter reading before I started filling. I have checked the PH of the city water and is running at 8.0 ph. My intentions was to fill to the skimmer level, start the pump only, and start adding acid to get PH down and stable before adding anything else. Next add my stabilizer in a sock in the skimmers, salt in the pool, and some bleach to bring the chlorine up a little until the stabilizer is correct. Is there a different order I should be doing this or am I missing something such as borax etc. that I should be putting in to start with? Thanks for any help.

I'd start with getting some chlorine in there first before your pool turns green! It can happen faster than you realize! For the first few days until you get a CYA reading, you'll have to add bleach 2 or 3 times per day because it will quickly be lost to the sun. I'd add enough to get to about 5ppm each time. Hopefully, that will keep you from going all the way down to 0 between additions of bleach.

Then, you can do the other things. You can actually work on these items one right after the other with no problem. If you are going to add CYA via a sock in front of the return jet, move the sock out of the way before you add the acid.

Sounds like you have been doing your HW and have done some reading and have a pretty good handle on this. Good for you!

The only thing you didn't mention was the alk. Have you tested that yet? If not, no worries -- just test it when you get a minute.

Do you have a good test kit like we recommend?

(BTW - you don't need any Borax. Borax is used to raise ph and yours is a little too high.)

Thanks Watermom,, Most of the HW was from years past on the forum. I did a Baq to chlorine swap on this pool back in 2003 by PoolDoc's method. I know we used to post some together back then and I was on the forum quite a bit but have not been on here so much lately. Guess I will need the Borax though,, over shot the PH with acid. It changes a lot faster on fresh water than it did with the old water. One reason I asked about the borax when I was on the forum back then someone on here was doing some work on larger amounts of borax to act as a buffer (wish I could remember who it was). Never heard the final results though. I still have one of PoolDoc's kits and probably enough drops for this year and part of next. I bought a refill kit from him right before he quit selling them. I have some bleach in it now and have fixed up a jug with a dripper to keep putting it in slow when I am gone for all day. This should get me by till I get the CYA up. I am looking to start it at about 40 to start with. Do you think that is high enough to start with. Thanks for the advice,,,,,

Yes, CYA of 40 is fine. I'd be curious to see a picture of your jug with a dripper. If you can, send a pic to poolforum AT gmail DOT com and reference the URL of this thread.

Was your user name when you were on the forum before also NiteSwimmer? Glad to have you back with us again!

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Originally Posted by Watermom

Yes, CYA of 40 is fine. I'd be curious to see a picture of your jug with a dripper. If you can, send a pic to poolforum AT gmail DOT com and reference the URL of this thread.

Was your user name when you were on the forum before also NiteSwimmer? Glad to have you back with us again!

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Ok the jug is just something makeshift. I took a lid from the bleach jug and took a very small straight pin, heated it and pushed it through the cap but not through the white inner liner. I then took and put 4 small holes in a square pattern in the inner liner with the same pin. The jug sits upside down in a 2 gallon bucket that has a hole in the bottom just big enough to keep the bleach jug upright, which sits on the deck centered above the skimmer. It would probably work just as well if it I put the jug right in the skimmer though.

I looked up some old notes I had on the pool and did find some names of who I posted with. It was you, Txguy, ReGuheert, Warddc, Gunslinger, and of course Ben. To be honest I don't remember the very first user name I used,, I'm sure it had "Nite" in it somewhere. I had been off the forum for a while and then I think it was down for a while also but when I went to get back on it I registered again if I remember correctly.

Well --- glad you are back!