Hello, I just wanted to say that I have successfully had beautiful, sparkling clean water since opening our pool this year using borax, soda and bleach. However, I would encourage you to purchase stabilizer since there is not a substitute. And, the pool seems to need more bleach all the time, whereas, once acceptable pH and alkalinity levels were reached, it has been weeks since more of these have been needed.

One thing that I didn't realize was that even if the pool has not had lots of swimmers in it, the Hayward sand filter still has to be backwashed. That is the only time the water had any kind of slight cloudiness.