Somebody please tell me this is worth it....

[Ken_J]

This year was the first time I took my cover off to find the green nightmare. 3 times, before I finally put a temporary fence aroudn my pool, my dogs and the neighbor's dogs jumped on my solid cover resulting in a whole lot of leaves making into the pool. I opened my pool on Saturday, added 5 gallons of bleach, scooped out 99% of the leaves and by Sunday night the water was blue but cloudy. By Tuesday the kids were swimming! Hang in there and follow advice from the great folks on this site!

Update: Just saw your signature and saw vinly liner. My experience is that inground vinyl liner pools usually don't have drains in the deep end - mine doesn't. A couple times a week I take the vacuum head and throw it in the deep end over night to pull from the bottom instead of the skiimer. It works wonder in keeping the water clear. Before I started doing this I would occasionally get cloudy water. Since doing this, crystal clear! Also add a little DE to my sand filter when it gets cloudy now.

[CarlD]

Pool stores sell Liquid Chlorine, usually in 5 gallon drums called "carboys". I prefer the square carboys to the round ones. They don't roll when you lay them on their side.

There's usually a $6 or $7 deposit as they are reusable. I've been changing over my 3 for several years now. Look for the basic LC price to be between $16 and $20 (good bargain -- pretty expensive). You'll need a spigot to dispense the stuff easily--they are $4-$5 but last for years.

If you have the option, find the place that sells the most of this stuff. That means they turn it over quickly and it doesn't have time to degrade. The place I get it from goes through several pallets a week, and even though they say it's 12.5% (just double ultra bleach) I find it tests out at 14% usually. (To test, add 10ml of LC to 10 liters of water--that's 5 soda-bottles--in a five gallon bucket and test the water like you would your pool. The resultant FC amount is equal to the concentration level).