fwew, man i was cranky this morning. my fiance and i have a 10 week old and i think the lack of sleep is effecting me lol.

watermom thanks for trying to help let me see what i can answer here and give a status update.

ok so yesterday i floc'd the pool. i know the bbb method really doesnt call for it, but i just checked a bit ago and it cleared the pool up! so it did what it said, cool. so i go to vacuum the pool via waste and ...nothing is coming out ahahhaah

so im standing there, trying to figure this out. and someone earlier mentioned that the setup may be reversed. i think they hit the nail on the head. earlier in the thread i mentioned that recirculating the pool came out the backwash valve. so in reality, i think i had it on waste ahahahah omg thats not good. two hours of me running it on waste right back into the pool. so i go and switch it to "waste" and it seems to be recirculating ahahah. ok so now i know that the setup is backwards or the sticker was put on reversed. {good grief}

so my plan is to let it recirc a bit and then let it settle and go out to a nice dinner with my fiance while her mom watches our son. {first night out since his birth, gonna miss the lil bugger}

then i will vacuum tomorrow and check the levels again.


as far as your questions. yup there is a pool place nearby, i will have them check my water for sure and post results.

bleach; it varies a bit. anywhere from 1.5-3 gallons a day. the three gallons was more at first. the sun beats down directly onto the pool all day so i think that doesnt help the chl levels.

borax. i add about two boxes a day. im very green at all this so im not sure if adding borax effects chl levels or vice versa etc. its actually not hard at all to maintain the proper levels {according to my test strips}

i have to read up on baking soda but havent added any yet.

i bought de today and plan on adding it after i vacuum. im going to read up on that as well. i believe i read a quarter cup at a time diluted in a gallon of water. then check the psi levels.

heres something that will make you smile at my expense a bit. when we bought the house the pool was in disarray. we put in a new liner and built a deck around it. the deck goes about 1/3 around the whole 24 ft pool. its pretty big. well i thought that it would be a GREAAAT idea to build the deck over the pump setup, to hide it and make the backyard look much more tidy. sooooo. everytime i have to change the setting on the filter, or backwash, or check psi or etc etc, i have to climb under the deck sorta hands and tips of feet and bearwalk my way to the filter. ahahhaahahh oh man if i ever change to a saltwater setup im moving it over. oh yeah, the handle for the valve on my filter...it sits between the joists for the deck. soooo if i want to see what setting its on i have to squeeze my huge head between a joist and the filter. needless to say i used a sharpie to write the setting positions on the front of the filter.

thanks again for the concern and help. i already started to tell friends about this forum via facebook. its really nice to have forums like this where people can just help each other. with all the con artists and people trying to take advantage of others in this world, its nice to see that there are still people who genuinely just want to help others.