New Owner, First Pool, and Results of my First K-2006 Test + Treatment

I have just a few beginner questions to see if I'm catching on to this chemistry thing. I am actually a mechanical engineer by trade, so my knowledge ends with the pool pump, valves, and piping. The chemistry is where I get caught up. Some quick background - I just bought this house with the pool installed about 1997 or so. it has a grout bottom with tiles and a spa with waterfall into the pool.

Quick administrative question - I've been a member of the forums now almost a week but cannot seem to access the other boards yet - exactly how long does it take to become "initiated?"

Per the suggestions laid out on this forum, I bought the following to get started:
* Taylor FAS-DPD K-2006 test kit
* Several bottles of basic concentrated Walmart bleach (8.25%)
* 20 Mule Team Borax
* Large box of baking soda
* Trichlor chlorine tabs
* D.E. for my filter

It was an expensive start-up process (ballpark of $300 for all that), but I'm hoping future costs will be small to replace chemicals as I go.

Results of my first test w/ the K-2006 kit after treating with suggested materials:
* CYA: 100 ppm
* pH: 7.8 (started @ 7.1 two days ago, added 80% box of Borax over 2 days)
* Free Chlorine: 15 ppm (I added 121 fl. oz. of the 8.25% bleach last night to shock the pool, since this has not been done in weeks or months possibly)
* Combined Chlorine: 0.5 ppm
* Total Alkalinity: 150 ppm

My question is pretty general. How do my numbers look, what other information do you need, and what should I expect from here?

Other helpful info:
* Location: Dallas, TX
* High Temp in last 1 week: 89F
* Low Temp in last 1 week: 50F
* Projected High in next 1 week: 80F
* Projected Low in next 1 week: 37F

We generally get a couple of freezes each winter, usually snow 1-2 times if at all with average highs around 65F but with wild deviations.

Thanks so much for any help.

Hi, and welcome to the group!

Your membership can only be upgraded by Ben, aka Pooldoc, aka the forum owner. Usually it only takes a few days or so, but traffic is slow around here this time of year and he's had some family stuff going on, so it may take a bit longer. However, until that happens, you can log out and see/read pretty much the whole forum, and then log back in and post whatever questions or comments you have here. Once the membership is upgraded, your threads will be moved to the appropriate categories. Also while logged out, you can read any post made by me, Watermom, or Pooldoc, and use the google search linked in our sigs to search the entire forum and archives if you want to look up something specific. Once you're upgraded, you won't have to log out to do that.

Your nubmers don't look too bad, except that your CYA is already high at 100 ppm, so you don't want to use any more trichlor tabs. Take a look at your tabs ingredient list and make sure that they don't contain copper. If they do, then I wouldn't use them EVER....if they don't, then you can resume using them next year when you need to increase your CYA. In the meantime, switch to bleach--the water temps are cold enough now that I'm only dosing my pool every week and a half or so. Just a comment about the CYA--we generally recommend a CYA of around 40-50...however, I live very near you, so our climates are almost identical, and I run my CYA at 90-100 ppm on purpose because I find that with our climate the way it is, if I run lower CYA, then I just burn through chlorine too fast.

Otherwise you're looking pretty good--don't raise the pH any--it's okay in the mid-7's range.

Hope this helps!