new pool just filled with well water

I have the hth drop test these are the results:
CL 0 (have two plunks in there getting bleach after work today)
PH 7.2
ALK 130
Hardness 10

The ALk need to come up right? thanks,

Jimmy,
Need a little bit more info on the pool. Plaster, Vinyl, etc. The TA should be fine for now, the calcium hardness is low but may not be relevant if you have a vinyl-lined pool. The #1 thing is to get the chlorine level up to shock territory and also to test the CYA (stabalizer) to see if using the pucks is good or bad. (If you have little or none keep using pucks till you hit a CYA of 30-50).

sorry about that the pool is a AG 12k 15x30. Didn't test cya yet because i just put the plunks in yesterday and i thought it would take a while to show up. Also is it true that you can only test cya 2 times with the hth 5 in one drop test? i'm going to be putting the skimmer and pump in tonight and add bleach. also the hardness is probably lower than 10 the test didn't turn red it was purple and one drop made it blue.

Jimmy,
I didn't read close enough... the CYA should be zero in fill water so wait a while. I am not familiar with the HTH test but you can always have the pool store test for CYA. It will probably take a week or so of the pucks to get the CYA up to min levels so just check the level at that point. Until then you WILL have a tough time keeping chlorine in the water. Once you get the equipment hooked up I would dose with bleach to shock the pool, about 10ppm. This will take approx 2 gallons of regular bleach - 1 gallon 5.25% raises 10,000 gallons to 5.25ppm Cl.

Hey Jimmy welcome to the site. It may be correct that the HTH test kit only allows about 2 tests possibly 3. I do know that the amount of CYA reagent they give you is about the same size bottle of the yellow and red drops for pH and TC. I wouldn't be concerned yet with measuring the CYA level since you just filled your pool. Wait until you have added some stabilizer before you test it.

Don't concern yourself with the calcium test as it doesn't matter with your vinyl pool.

I highly recommend a test kit from this site. Before I had it I didn't know squat about my water... now I know everything about it and much more than I trust a local pool store to tell me what it contains :)

If you are going to use pucks which wouldn't be a bad idea for now I would suggest Kmart since they sell trichlor tabs withOUT copper. The HTH tabs from WalMart do have copper in them which is not really something you want to add to your water.

I too filled with well water and we are from the same area. I haven't had any problems with the water causing issues.


take care man!