regular maintenance help

i'm new to this forum. need help with what chemicals to use as my regular maintenance. have inground pool with vinyl liner. as a new pool owner was told by the installer to use bioguard products(i know selling their products but that's what i used....burn out, stingy sticks, back up alagecide. last year, i used the same except didn't use stingy sticks, used 3" tablets in the skimmer from walmart. friend told me to use bleach instead of the burn out but to continue to use the 3" tablets in the skimmer and back up alagecide.....can you help me and tell me what you find is best to use as the regular maintenance program...what to use, how often to use, and if you recommend bleach, how much to use and how often. thank you.

First, ditch the pucks/sticks/pool store goo. If you follow the guidelines in the web sites (this forum and the sister site poolsolutions.com - it's a lot of information, but it's worth it) chances are you will need VERY LITTLE from the pool store.

Also, download the bleach calc http://www.hal-pc.org/~mwsmith2/BleachCalc262.exe one of our forum members wrote the program and it's invaluable in calculating chemicals.

Get a good drop based testing kit that can test for Free Chlorine, Total Chlorine, Combined Chlorine, pH, Alkalinity, CYA (cyanuric acid/stabilizer/conditioner), Calcium Hardness.

Post back here with your numbers when you get them and we can give you better info!

chlorine 5.0, ph 7.5, hardness 280, ta 160, cya 90.
when using bleach, do you have to use it daily and do you keep anything in the skimmer

You use bleach to chlorinate when needed, to keep your FC at the recommended level. See below.

Ben's 'best guess' FC/Stabilizer table for algae free operation of OUTDOOR pools -- as of July 2003 --

Use the info in this chart to help you figure out what levels of chlorine you need to maintain in your pool based on the amount of CYA (cyanuric acid, also called stabilizer) that you have in your pool. (FC = free chlorine)

Stabilizer . . . . . . Min. FC . . . . Max FC . . . 'Shock' FC
=> 0 ppm . . . . . . . 1 ppm . . . . . 3 ppm . . . . 10 ppm
=> 10 - 20 ppm . . . . 2 ppm . . . . . 5 ppm . . . . 12 ppm
=> 30 - 50 ppm . . . . 3 ppm . . . . . 6 ppm . . . . 15 ppm
=> 60 - 90 ppm . . . . 5 ppm . . . . . 10 ppm . . .. 20 ppm
=> 100 - 200 ppm . . . 8 ppm . . . . . 15 ppm . . .. 25 ppm

So, your CYA is 90, therefore your FC reading should be between 5-10 ppm. Nice thing with a high CYA, it will hold the chlorine longer. Still, if you've only started using bleach, I'd advocate testing nightly just so you get a feel of how your pool holds chlorine. I know that I need to add a large jug of 6% ultra bleach every third day as maintenance. But, add more following heavy usage. I add the bleach thru the skimmer basket. No extra gizmo's needed to do this.

Hope this helps.

CaryB
Go 'Canes!

thanks. just a few more questions. with using only bleach...do you still use alagecide and clarifier as part of the maintenance program or are you saying bleach only and nothing else? thanks again.

If you maintain proper water chemistry levels, you do not need algaecide nor clarifier as part of a regular maintenance program. I don't use either. That said, some people do add algaecide (polyquat 60%) regularly. That certainly doesn't hurt, but isn't really necessary. But definitely clarifier is not a regular additon.