Watermom and PoolDoc, thank you very much for your helpful replies, and I apologize for my delayed response. As for what else I used last year, I used the liquid chlorine from pinch-a-penny, I think it's 65% chlorine and their chlorine pucks with stabilizer and I think they are 90% chlorine. Also, I think I used s little bit of clarifier and an algaecide. The latter didn't really seem to do anything.

The test kit I've been using is the "basic 4" also from P-A-P. I have the strips but didn't trust them. No I don't have a way to test for CYA, in fact, I didn't even know about CYA unti reading here.

PoolDoc, I'll get the water tested for the CYA and post back as you said. Thanks for posting the steps, I will follow them. I do try to remove the algae from the surfaces, I had vacuumed it but now I took the wide pool brush and "swept" it off and get it into "solution" and let the filter take care of it then I wash and backwash the filter.

It will be a bit tough on us right now to purchase a K2006 or 2006C so maybe having it tested will get me by for a little while (???).

Thanks very much again, I really appreciate the help. Please post anything else that you think of that I can and/or should do, I'll report back as soon as I have some result on the CYA result.

Steve