Opening pool early and possible leak

[PoolDoc]

Do NOT let it turn into a swamp, no matter what your plans are. It's WAY too much work to clean a swamp!

Add 3 gallons of plain 6% household bleach, per 10,000 gallons of water. Continue with 3 gallon doses every 12 hours till the algae has changed from green to brown or cloudy blue. Do you have a testkit? If not, read the testkit page in my signature. (Strips do NOT count!!)

[fiveUNDERfive]

I have a drop kit from Walmart for now. No strips. Chlorine is way above what my kit can test. Looks like I overshot on the borax too tho not sure how. It was barely registering this am before adding borax (barely red tint) and now it looks close to 8!? I tried to order the Taylor kit last yr but kept getting an email that it was back ordered and finally went with this cheaper ($29?) alternative from Wally. Is there Anything midrange price wise I could find locally? I'm torn about spending too much money if we are going to have to replace the liner. We are currently in need of about $30k to fix our septic and I have a feeling hubby would rather scrap the pool than pay $$ to fix it (much to the dismay of our 6kids and moi)

The "algae" isnt green like u would think of algae. ITs more like a fine brown film on the bottom that stirred uP when I tried to vacuum. I already added two gals of 6% bleach this am bc I put two trichlor pucks in last night. Tho they are leftover from previous owner so prolly 2-3 yrs old? I also added about 1/2 lb of borax first thing this am.

[PoolDoc]

We are currently in need of about $30k to fix our septic

I saw that, and thought, "Where in the world is she, that a septic tank install costs $30K -- California? New York?". So, I went and looked up your IP address. Yep. New York. Sorry about that.

For a vinyl AG pool, with no obvious calcium problem, the HTH 6-way is fine.

Brown powder sounds like dead algae.

[fiveUNDERfive]

What's the best way then to determine chlorine when it's above 5? The water is looking more cloudy but I'm hoping that's bc I stirred up the dust. Hoping to vacuum when hubby gets home. Shall I keep adding bleach? Until the water is clear again? I'm going to need CYA too at some point but I think I need to clear out the brown stuff first, right?

[PoolDoc]

Do the HTH 6-way tests, and report them. If the OTO (chlorine) color is darker or different than the kit, say what color it is.

[Watermom]

You can also do a dilution to make your kit read higher than 5. It isn't super accurate but better than nothing. It is also not meant as a permanent way to test high chlorine levels. But, it may help you out for now.

Testing Without a Good Kit

[aylad]

Just to add a comment--it's normal to get falsely high pH readings when your chlorine is that high, so don't worry about it for now if you know that it's over 7.0.

[fiveUNDERfive]

Ok. Just tested now. Nothing put in since about 11.

TC - orange (like the skin of a real ripe orange)
pH - around 7.8 I think
TA - is it sposed to stay pink? Put in 20 drops and saw color change but if I swirled it didn't stay pink
CYA - out of Reagant and Wally only had red/yellow Reagant repl