DiChlor OverKill

--- Should I start afresh or work to correct this chemically? ---

I've been devouring the materials at PoolSolutions and creating my own portable booklet to keep with the the materials that came with my SWCG unit. And, I want to thank you, Doc Ben, for your use of and skill with standard, formal English which allow me to turn off my inner editor, read without a red pen, and plunk your material into WordPerfect file on its way to the printer.

I have an Intex Easy-Set pool, 8x30 ~640 gallons, not so much for kiddie's splash-fests, but for hot and tired grown-ups to sit and soak. Until recently, I've been using this little pool, without a pump, BBB-style and emptying and refilling every 7 days. Now that the SWCG unit has arrived, I started from scratch and made a huge error at the start. (The SWCG unit with pump is for a much larger pool.)

Upon filling Fri eve (3 days ago) with my 16-grains-of-hardness water, I introduced
-- 13 lbs Morton Pool salt //
-- 3.7 oz (wt) Borax powder // and
-- >1 cup (250 ml) of dichlor granules (56%) instead of liquid Clorox--- Yikes!

I ran the pump (1500 gph) 18 hours while researching DE-chlorination (USDA & USFS have great info which I can attach as a PDF-file for the moderators' evaluation).

The next day I introduced what I considered to be a first dose of
-- 1.4 oz (wt) Ascorbic acid granules from NOW foods.

Saturday evening, after using a dropper to create a 9:1 solution of Reverse-Osmosis water and pool water, I used the test-strips

enclosed with the SWCG-unit whiched indicated
-- TA > 240ppm (my colour was twice as dark);
-- pH > 8.5 (again, much darker);
-- Free Chlorine 0.2ppm (simply bleached out?).

No CYA used and no Poly-Quat added yet.

I have a K-1000 kit from Taylor, as yet unused; it seems to me that the levels are so high right now that the test would be wasted.

Our daytime highs, with the usual unrelenting full sunshine, have been from the upper 80s to the low 100s this summer. Southern California is under drought restrictions again (for a couple of years now), but if the pool should be mostly drained rather than doctored, I would do that.

Other resources on hand:
1. two submersible pumps (yup, when we do get rain, my back-garden floods) which I can put in the center of pool, with or without a sprinkler-attachment, to agitate and/or aerate the water.

2. chemicals (for dyeing textiles)
-- Sodium hexametaphosphate (water softener),
-- S.thiourate (or S. thiosulfate-- I'd have to check this),
-- Soda Ash and
-- Sodium Bisulfate--96%,
-- and 5 oz ascorbic acid crystals.

If I've omitted any necessary information, please let me know.
A thousand thanks.

Sounds like you may be over thinking this a bit -- have your read the Intex pool recipe?
http://www.poolforum.com/pf2/showthread.php?17055

With a ~600 gallon pool, I'd plan to drain and refill every 2 weeks, and to use ONLY dichlor and borax. With a volume that small, you cannot run your pool like a pool; you have to run it like a spa. In particular, that means not only using small amounts of dichlor to maintain the pool, but also adding a small amount after each use, to compensate for body goo (sweat, oils, etc) that enter the pool with each swimmer.

I wouldn't bother with the SWCG -- save it for use when you upgrade to a bigger pool.