Opening numbers are in...

I opened Tuesday afternoon. Added 14lbs. Cal Hypo and nothing else. Waited. Today, Friday, tested and cleaned the pool.

FC:8.5
CC:0
PH:7.2
Alk:60
CYA: (under) 30

Pool opened nearly (deceptively) blue but I still had plenty of milky white dead algae to vacuum up after the nuclear shock and awe campiagn. I added a pound of DE to my sand filter through one of my skimmers. While the filter pressure rose quickly to over 22lbs as I vacuumed, I got to vac about 1/5 of the pool. Backwashed and repeated with another lb. DE each time for about 6 or 7 times. You could tell when the gummy dead algae was gunking things up because the vac head lost suction. I vacuumed every inch (sloped walls, side walls...) with max vac head pressure and what I couldn't get to I brushed.

I am writing this post for people that might be skeptical of BBB. We had a warm winter here in Jersey. No snow. Bad for both pools and XC Skiing (2 of my favorite things!). Yeah, I have some adjusting to do, but a few days after opening and one vac job (albeit a very long one) later, just one vacuuming, this hole in the ground is perfectly swimmable. AND, I vaccuumed the whole pool
without it getting cloudy AT ALL because of the DE. It is sparkling clear. I need some baking soda and CYA, albeit, my CYA has tested near zero and magically climbed a week or so after opening to a real number? This has been consistent. My natural PH tends to be around 7.8/7.9 but my ALK has been dropping steadily and predictably over the past 2 summers. So, baking soda and CYA? And minor adjustments...

Last year my chemical cost was $110.00 TOTAL and I'm a 36,000 gallon pool. It will be a bit higher this year, but I have complete control of my pool and I know the why behind every decision, addition or adjustment. I can't even figure out why y'all do this, it is pool liberation and justice for all but to any new lurker, this is real chemistry. And it really works. I have absolutely no connection to Pool Solutions, Ben or any mod. Nothing. I am still awed by the efficacy of BBB. Well over 30 years of pool responsibility and last few have been the easiest and best ever.

I almost feel bad for not posting more, but hey I am a social worker, and y'all are accomplishing our dream. To put ourselves out of business! Thanks to you all, from the very depths of my deep seated control issues... And for newbies, this ain't no joke.

Paul

Paul,
What a great post! Thank you so much for writing in and sharing. It is much appreciated. Good to see you back around the forum this year and hope you have a great summer!

Hi Paul, and welcome back for another season!! Just wanted to add my thanks to you for the testimonial. Hope to see you around the forum more this summer. Happy swimming !! :cool:

Thanks to you all! For years and years, of all the things I do, yard, grocery shopping, cooking, cleaning, snow clearing, landscaping, the pool work was something I DREADED! And I LOVE the water and I LOVE to swim. I have no real memory of not having a pool and I live, and grew up, a good bike ride to the beaches of the "Jersey Shore." I was about to lose it and give up on my pool a few summers ago. I now understand that (simply) years of Trichlor got my CYA up to about 6000 ppm. I read everything I could get, on-line, Dan Hardy's book... I started to understand things a bit, enough to know that, when a guy in a local pool store kept insisting that there wasn't CYA in Trichlor pucks, something was seriously wrong with the pool store model. He said "it's just CHLORINE" and I add the caps because he was yelling and angry that I was insisting otherwise, in a slightly sheepish way, out of confusion. And let me tell you, I do neither sheepish or confused well. I had stumbled across the forum in my quest for information a bunch of times, but I didn't know that I had actually found the holy grail of pool information, the fountain of pool wisdom... It was after this interaction that I swore off pool stores and luckily, the next time I came across a forum post on a Google search, I followed it here. I joined. I read pool solutions. I spent an entire beautiful sunny weekend on my couch reading everything here while my green pool just sat there. I had it. I knew it. From that moment on I had control of my pool. It was never the amount of work that I dreaded about a pool, I'm actually kind of a workaholic type, it was the confusion and the dependency and the fact that the answers (directions?) I got from pool stores were always different? Like this was mystical alchemy. Considering the aforementioned control issues and you have grass outside the kitchen door instead of a pool. I actually don't dread anything at all about my pool work anymore and I enjoy the pool 10 times more because of it and because I understand it. Saving a small fortune is nice too, but frosting for me. Command is the cake.

What you have done here is great, the best thing for pools and pool owners I have ever experienced. Thank you! I'm going outside now with my daughter to blow up a million pool toys!