Quote Originally Posted by TTorreyson View Post
As a side note, if you run your fingers around your o-ring and you get black on your fingers, go ahead and spend the $4.00 to replace it as well as save time and headaches.
That is CORRECT, and it applies to most black rubber parts. Also: don't swear off pool stores completely. They DO have things you may need, like pool parts.

You can continue to use trichlor for now -- it doesn't matter much whether your CYA goes up to 120 ppm, compared to 100. But, while you do, you probably also want to check on liquid chlorine availability and also calcium hypochlorite. You'll need a source of unstabilized chlorine, but with a pool your size, using 6% bleach means lugging a bunch of bottles.

And yes, you probably want to use 5 ppm as the absolute low, and try to stay between 5 - 10 ppm.