Hello all,

I just moved into a house that has a pool. Never had any prior experience with pool maintenance until now. I get the hang of most of everything, but I've run into a few problems. First, I have a cartridge filter that I recently replaced the cartridges to. I doubt the previous owner ever cleaned them by the look of it. Whenever I vacuum the bottom, all is well and the pool looks great until a few hours later when I see dirty back on the bottom. Obviously, the cartridges are not doing their job, but since they're brand new, I have no idea why it's like that. It's been incredibly frustrating.

Second, the pool is far too basic. It's cloudy and the pH is over 8. The pool is about 25 feet long, quasi-rectangular, and goes from 3 feet to 12 feet (yes, 12 feet!). I dumped 1 gallon of muriatic acid into it and the pH hasn't budged. I still have another gallon, but I'm left wondering how much is it going to take to make progress.

I really enjoy the pool and the crash course in maintenance that I've had. Won't be too long and I should have everything conquered, but I really need to figure out these 2 dilemmas