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Hi! I’m used to maintaining public pools. I now have a 10’ X 30” intex type easy set pool and am wondering about maintenance. It looks like I can just use 1/2 cup of bleach and test strips. How often do I need to do that and how long after adding the bleach do I have to wait to swim? Thank you!
Even in an Intex, you need stabilizer, unless you are going to fill and drain regularly. The half-life of chlorine in a sunlit pool filled with clear water is literally 15 minutes, in the top 18" inches. Since this is about a 1/2 slice of your pool, that means your pool would have a chlorine half-life of about 30 minutes.
So if you add 5 ppm of chlorine to a pool in the sun, at 1 pm, then:1:00pm = 5 ppm. . . and that's without considering chlorine loss from "people goo"!
1:30pm = 2.5 ppm
2:00pm = 1.3 ppm
2:30pm = 0.6 ppm
3:00pm = 0.3 ppm
3:30pm = 0.1 ppm
Take a look at the Intex pool recipe, which focuses on using dichlor to add chlorine + stabilizer, till you have adequate stabilizer levels.
And, you'll need at least an HTH 6-way kit from Walmart or Amazon
Test strips don't measure chlorine well, and are pretty much useless at measuring stabilizer, but you need to know stabilizer levels, since your chlorine level needs to be a percentage of your stabilizer level.
I realize that a lot of what I'm telling you is probably contrary to what you've been taught . . . but we're right, and they're wrong ;) . . . and there are 10,000's of posts, including some very technical ones in the "China Shop" section detailing both evidence and scientific proof. But, if you can't accept what I'm saying, just follow pool store advice till you can. It will be better than nothing.
Unfortunately, 'mix-n-match' doesn't work well with BBB methods vs conventional pool care!
[ Upgraded membership; moved thread to Intex-type pool section <= you may need to log out and back in, to see everything. ]