If you've got trichlor, I'd buy a cheap floater and a couple of boxes of borax at Walmart.

1. Start filling but do not let the hose water strike the pool directly. Instead, put a *clean* plastic bucket in the pool, and let the hose go into the bucket. Put a trichlor tab in the bucket. Filling via a bucket this way reduces the chance of iron spotting, if there's some iron in the fill. Putting the trichlor tab in the bucket keeps a small amount of chlorine in the fill.

2. Once you have a 1 foot or so of water, put the floater in with some tabs in it and pour a box borax in the bucket. (Borax and trichlor are one of the very few combinations of pool chemicals that can touch each other!)

3. Start the pump as soon as possible, but again, avoid having jets of water aimed at the pool surface.

4. Keep the pump on 24/7 till the pool is filled and adjusted.

5. Order a K2006 -- the Leslie's kit is OK to start, but . . .

6. Except for staining, I'm not aware of water chemistry ruining gel coat. When you say yours was 'ruined', what exactly do you mean?