New AG pool owner with questions

[aylad]

Hello, iBrew, and welcome to the forum!!

Congratulations on the pool, I'm sure you'll love it. We advocate the BBB method almost solely around here. Your alternatives are Baquacil, which you'll find to be very expensive,( not to mention that it will not kill viruses in the water, so there's no way I would use that with kids swimming in the pool), or SWCG, which is still chlorine but I don't think is available for the soft side pools. So...chlorine is your best bet, and will be the easiest and cheapest way to keep your water clean. You're going to need to get a drop-based test kit. We recommend the K-2006, which can be found in the Amazon link in my signature, but you also can get by for now with the 6-way drop kit that you can get for around $20 at WalMart. You're going to need a few gallons of plain, unscented bleach, and some CYA (also called "stabilizer", "conditioner" or "balancer", but look at the ingredient label for cyanuric or isocyanuric acid). All of these things can be bought at WalMart. I get my CYA in the section of spa supplies. If you'll go ahead and get the test kit and run a set of tests on your fill water (don't do the CYA test, though, there's only enough reagents for about 3 tests and your fill water won't have any) and post them here, we can tell you what else you're going to need to get...but the rest of it can also come from WalMart, Sam's, or whatever other grocery store you use.

The pool will need to be chlorinated and at least pH balanced, before the kids can get in it, but it only takes a few minutes to accomplish that.