Hi Donna,

I'd like to welcome you to the forum--and assure you that pool care really doesn't have to be a pain and involve lugging lots of heavy stuff, we just have to help figure out your pool's problem in order to get you to that point.

I first wanted to clarify something in Pooldoc's post, when he said "Add 2 boxes per evening (slowly, to the skimmer, basket in place, pump running) till your pH is above 7.2.", he meant Borax--the stuff in the green box. The purpose of the Borax is to raise your pH so it gets to a level that's safe for your liner, so you won't need muriatic acid to lower it. (There are two reasons why we recommend adding a lot of Borax. The first is to raise your pH. The second is the addition of lots of Borax and muriatic acid, and that's done when you're trying to raise your borates to help as an algaecide and clarify water. The reason you're adding the Borax is to raise pH, which is why you don't need to worry about the acid for now.)

I can assure you that you haven't reached the point yet where Homeland security is worried about the quantity of bleach you're using--I think I hold that title around here due to an overreaction to a situation in my pool a few years ago. However, you will need to either keep a good quantity of bleach or dichlor on hand until you get your stabilizer up. You can get the stabilizer in a small quantity and add it via a sock tied in front of a return while you're using bleach to chlorinate, or you can use the granulated dichlor, which will also add stabilizer. It will, however, lower your pH, so you might have to keep adding the borax for awhile to compensate for it.

In the meantime, get the smallest amount of DE you can find, drop a handful of it in your skimmer and watch the returns to test your filter as Pooldoc described, and then post here with your results and we can help you go from there.

Janet