Hi bdurham,

First of all, let me welcome you to the forum!! When I modded your post in, it contained a link that I deleted in the interest of getting your post to the forum quickly. Any post containing a link must be modded in by Ben, and I haven't seen him around lately so don't know how long it would be if we waited for him to approve it. So--if you want to make a new post and just include the link, I can ask Ben to look at it and have it added to this thread, but in the meantime let me try to address some of your questions....

First off, congratulations for taking control of your own pool water and doing your homework--I know that it looks like you have a huge mess on your hands right now, but with some bleach and patience, it will be cleared up soon. First off, toss the strips-- they are largely inaccurate, but when cleaning up a mess, they are absolutely useless. You did well to buy a drop-based kit, even if it's a basic one. I highly encourage you to get the Taylor K-2006 (NOT the 2005) as soon as you can. Check the "off topic" forum for a link to buy it from Amazon for around $60, and if you use that link the forum gets a donation from the proceeds of the sale. One thing you can do to force your test kit to read higher levels of chlorine than it's designed for is outlined here http://www.poolforum.com/pf2/showthread.php?t=10073. Don't worry about the acid demand test--it's not really going to be of use to you unless you have a SWCG. Acid demand is NOT the same thing as CYA. The CYA test uses a small tube with a black dot at the bottom that you pour a mixture of pool water and reagent into until the dot disappears. If your current test kit cannot measure it, then take a pool water sample to the pool store and ask them to test for it--just don't buy any of the stuff they'll try to sell you--just tell them you already have it at home.

The first priority for you is going to be getting your pH up above 7.0. Most pH testers only measure as low as 6.8, so yours may be well below that, and pH lower than 7.0 is too acidic for your liner and can cause damage to your pool. Once that 1/2 box of Borax has had a couple of hours to dissolve, test for pH again and add 1/2 box at a time, allowing for dissolve/testing time between doses, until you get the pH to 7.0-7.6 range.

Your second priority is getting the green cleared up. In order to do this, (I'm going to assume that you have 0 CYA since it's swampy green) you need to raise your chlorine level to 15 ppm and keep it there by testing/adding more chlorine (BLEACH) to get back to the 15 ppm level as often as you possibly can, but at least 2-3 times daily. The more consistent you are about maintaining the 15 ppm, the faster the pool will clear. In a pool your size, 4 1/2 gallons of 6% bleach will take your water from 0 ppm to 15 ppm. Thereafter, each quart of 6% bleach will raise your chlorine by 1 ppm, so you can use that as a guide to figure out how much more you need to add.

It will be helpful if you can skim out all the leaves/debris you can get to, so the chlorine can focus on the green instead of the stuff you can easily remove. You'll need to keep the pump/filter running 24 hours/day and frequently clean the cartridge (cartridge type filter--the cartridge must be removed and hosed off, unfortunately, it can't be backwashed like a sand filter). As the algae is killed off by the chlorine, your filter will remove it from the water but you're going to have to check it frequently to make sure the cartridge doesn't completely get clogged up and overheat your pump. Brushing the pool daily during this process will help, as well.

This process can take up to several days, depending on how consistent you are about maintaining the chlorine level, but it will clear up the swamp, and much cheaper than the pool store. Don't be tempted to throw in anything else than Borax or bleach--no agaecides, clarifiers, etc. Just bleach.

Feel free to continue to post to this thread with further questions or just to let us know how it's going!

Janet

Edit: I see Carl beat me to the punch, guess I'm tying slow today!