Re: chlorine/algae problem
While you are trying to clear the pool, test the water at least twice per day (early morning within 2 hours of sunrise and in the evening when the sun is off the pool) and each time, add enough chlorine to get it back up to around 20ppm. More often that twice per day is fine. There is no such thing as testing and dosing too much when you are trying to clear a pool. Run the pump 24/7 and backwash when you have a 5-10psi increase over the clean filter pressure. When you get to where you can go from sundown one evening to sunup the next morning without losing more than 1ppm of chlorine, then I'd run high cl levels one more day just for added insurance that everything is dead. Then, you can let the cl drift down and go to testing in the evenings only. With a CYA of 60, you'll need to keep the cl between 5-10ppm all the time. You'll test in the evening and add however much bleach you need to get back to around 10. If by the next evening, you have dropped lower than 5ppm, take it up to about 11 instead. You'll soon learn how your pool behaves. It may be with a CYA of 60 that you'll be able to add liquid chlorine every other day instead of every day.
You do NOT need to change the sand. I'm on my 11th season with my same sand; others may have had theirs for much longer. You also do NOT need to purchase any type of sand cleaner. It simply is not needed.
So, after this is all cleared up, the plan will be --- test chlorine every night, test pH at least a couple times per week. Test alk maybe once a month of so. If you start having pH swings, test alk more often. If you don't use any forms of stabilized chlorine -- and I wouldn't in your pool --- you probably don't need to test the CYA but maybe once more in another month or so. (Stabilized forms of chlorine are trichlor and dichlor. Don't use them.)
Hope this helps. Let us know if you have further questions. Buy the kit! You're gonna need it to be able to maintain this pool properly.
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