The HTH deluxe kit is not a bad kit until you can get your Taylor, but not knowing how the reagents were stored, there's no way to really know how accurate your readings are. I'll let the salt experts chime in here about the salt, but just off the top of my head, I can tell you that the chlorine probably dissipated as quickly as it did because I'm guessing you have no stabilizer in the water. The trichlor will add a little, but not enough to be able to efficiently run your SWCG, so I would add enough CYA to get up to the level your SWCG manual says to use. It takes up to a week to dissolve, so I would supplement your chlorine using plain, unscented bleach in order to not burn out your SWCG prematurely. In a 26K pool, each gallon of 6% bleach will raise your chlorine by just over 2 ppm, so you can use that as a guide--if your CYA is zero, you need chlorine between 3-6 ppm at all times, which may take multiple applications of bleach during the day until your CYA registers.

Janet