help! husband bought pool and now i'm in charge of maintenance and have no CLUE!

Hi everyone, my dear husband had the urge to buy a pool yesterday, he got home and set it up and started to fill last night up to 1/4 and turned it off to continue today. Well i asked him is we needed to treat the water before getting, he said he had no idea, so now i'm stuck with maintenance of the pool. Thank god i found this helpful forum last night, i already tested the water for metals and no change of color. I started filling the pool again and added the 2cups of bleach. I'm a mother of 3 boys ( a moody 12 yr. Old, a temperamental 5 yr. Old, a very active 19 month old toddler and last but not least my 18 month old labrador) i would like to know how i can maintain this pool as easy as possible?( as you can see I have my hands full already) after the pool is full what is my next step to make it save for us to start swimming in it.
Pool info:
Intex 18' x 48" ultra frame
6432 gallons
Krystal clear 635T filter pump

Items i already purchased:
10 bottles of bleach
1 box of borax
hth 6-way test

In advance thank for all the help

It sounds like you've found the Super Simple Recipie. If not it's here: http://pool9.net/ssr/. A total of five pounds of dichlor will bring the CYA to almost 50; don't even bother measuing CYA until you've used that much dichlor. Until the CYA builds up, be sure to test for chlorine before each swim session, maybe every hour during the swimming.

As long as there's chlorine and the pH is between 7.0 and 8.0, it should be safe to swim. Be sure to chlorine is at or above the minimum as per the Best Guess Chart: http://pool9.net/cl-cya/. Each pound of dichlor you add will add almost 10ppm CYA. Guage your CYA level by how much dichlor you've used until you can measure CYA (wait until you've used 5lbs dichlor).

Give us a set of pool water chemistry readings taken with your 6-way drops kit (not CYA).

Order a Taylor K-2006. Accept no susbtitutes. Not available in stores. If you buy it through the links in this page: http://pool9.net/tk/, PoolForum gets some coin to keep the lights on.

Consider buying the Unicel or Filbur filter carts mentioned in the SSR page.

Congrats! you've found the right place to learn about safe, effective and efficient pool care. Read all you can at poolsolutions.com and here especially the stickies at the tops of the foums.

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Thank you, i already bought the stabilizer/conditioner from Wally world today in the morning because yesterday my bleach was being burned out by the simmer hot sun, and couldnt keep my CL level up every time i checked it wouls be at 0. The kids just got out of the pool after 2 1/2 .
Test results with the 6 way kit
CL : 2 PPM
PH: 7.5 PPM
TA: 100 PPM
Before the kids got in
Cl: 5 ppm
Ph:7.8 ppm
TA: 120 PPM
What is the difference between. The T 2006 KIT and the other one the T 100

Since you have granular CYA, it's straight to "BBB". 2.5-3 pounds stabilizer will bring your pool to 50-60 ppm CYA which should be good. CYA dissolves very slowly, we usually recommend putting it in an old sock and hanging that in front of the return squeeze the sock a few times a day to help it dissolve. Don't bother testing CYA until a couple days after the sock is empty.

Test and adjust chlorine frequently until you know you're staying above the minimum all the time.

The pH test in the K-2006 is easier to read and it has FAS-DPD for chlorine. You could add a Taylor K-1515 FAS-DPD to your HTH 6-way to achieve a similar set of tests.

What should my levels look like? How often should i change the filter? How much time should i have the filter on?
Test results
Cl : 5
Ph : 7.2
Ta : 120-130
It just started to rain hard will that affect my level?

Thank you
Bianey

CL 5 is fine for now as the CYA is not high enough to measure.
pH is good between 7.0 and 8.0
TA 120-130 is fine.

Rain near me is usually acidic and lowers pH and TA. Don't let the rain stop you from caring for the pool or it will have other consequences as well.

I just checked my levels
Results
Cl: 2ppm
Ph: 7.2 ppm
Ta: 110 ppm
I added 19 oz. Of bleach and 24 oz. Of borax
What about filter run time? And how often should i replace the filter? Is there another alternative to the filters( some that last longer)

Consider buying the Unicel or Filbur filter carts mentioned in the SSR page.

Filters can be washed - be careful not to damage the filter material.

When I had my Intex setup, I'd run the filter whenever no one was swimming. The filters are pretty small so run it as much as possible.

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