New User from sunny west Florida

Hi, all. My name is Jim and I'm a new user from sunny Homosassa, FL. Just moved into my home and am so pleased to have a really nice in-ground pool to cool off in on these hot summer days. I've never had a pool before and am on the low end of the learning curve for proper maintenance. As others have posted, taking water samples to the local pool stores has been frustrating for each reports different results. I had a pool service come out and do an initial clean up, but these guys just stuck a strip tester in the water and threw a pound of baking soda in. Not to scientific. I had to tell them to clean the filter and strainer basket on the pump or they would have skipped this. What a scam these guys can be. I intend to take the chore over from them right away. I've ordered the Taylor 2600 test kit from Amazon as many others have suggested so I should soon be able to at least test the chemistry accurately. I have seen several chemistry calculators on-line, but haven't a clue if any or good or not. Any advice on this is much appreciated. I do believe that my chlorine is high and alkalinity slightly low (5 ppm and 75 ppm respectively). All the pool stores reported nearly the same results on these. The pool is hard surface and has numerous stains, which I do not know why. As soon as I have my test kit I'll post my pool statistics (size and equipment types) and the chemistry results and would very much appreciate advice on balancing the water.

Well, keep your head up and your tail down until later. Jim

1. Post the results you do have

2. Get a cheap OTO / phenol red kit locally (yellow / red drops)

3. High chlorine is not usually a problem; low chlorine is.

4. Low alkalinity is not an urgent problem; pH below 7.0 is. Use borax by the box to raise it.

5. THe poolcalculator.com is generally reliable and accurate, if somewhat complex. Do NOT trust the pH prediction calculations, however.

And. . .

welcome to the forum; thanks for the subscription.

And welcome to sunny Florida. We are due east of you about 115 miles. The guidance you will get here WORKS. Our pool has not looked this good in the 2 years we've owned it, since finding this forum.