new to pool stuff

[aylad]

With no CYA in the water, make sure you keep your chlorine between 3-6 ppm at all times. (Now is when the best guess chlorine chart linked in my sig will become important to you ). However, as your CYA level rises, so must your minimum chlorine (use the chart!! ) We usually initially tell people to aim for 40-50 ppm of CYA to start with. However, I'm about 2 1/2 hours from you, so my climate is very much the same as yours, and I find that I lose too much chlorine too fast if I keep it that low. I run my pool at 80-90 ppm CYA, but it's in full sun all day.

My advice to you would be to start with about 50 ppm, test your chlorine use daily for a few days, and see what your average is. Then bump your CYA up by about 10-20 ppm and see if your chlorine use slows down. You can keep bumping up a little at a time this way until you find the point where you're losing the least amount of chlorine in a day. By only bumping up a little at at a time, you won't completely overshoot your idea level, because it's easy to lower the CYA by 10-20 ppm than it is to tell you right off the bat to go for 90 ppm.

[waterbear]

There is NO good reason to put it in a sock with an ingrround pool unless you are still backwashing every day or two. Even in the sock much of it will go out and end up in the filter and if you backwash you will possibly lose some of it. In any case. forget about it for a week and then test the level. Whatever it tests at in a week is going to be it so if it is still to low then add more.

[Red Gate Zoo]

I guess I have been so accustomed to backwashing 2-3 or more times/ day that letting it go for several days scared me. But I see that the pressure is holding at 10-12 lbs. over "clean" pressure. (Last backwash was about 24 hrs. ago.) So maybe I should backwash once more & then add the cyanuric to the skimmer?

[PoolDoc]

You want to be able to go 2 - 3 days without backwashing, before you add it to your skimmer.

[Red Gate Zoo]

It has been a week since I added 12 lbs. granulated cyanuric acid + 1 gal. liquid Instant Conditioner. The granulated has finally dissolved & my CYA=32 (dot finally disappeared). I am using about 2 lbs. Cal-hypo/day to keep the FC=3-5. pH is holding steady at pH=7.6-7.8. Other results: CC=0-.5, TA=125, CH=500.

Pool never looked better! Sparkling clean! Also, my filter only needs backwashing maybe once a week. What are your recommendations? Should I add more cyanuric?

[Watermom]

You'll probably want the CYA closer to 50 to make it easier to keep chlorine in the pool. I'd quit using the cal-hypo. Your calcium hardness reading is getting pretty high and you may end up with some cloudy water issues. (Recommended level is 200-400 for a gunite pool. Vinyl pools don't need any.)

[waterbear]

As watermom said, stop the cal hypo because your calcium level is pretty high. You might want to consider dropping the TA down a bit (around 80 ppm) so yo don't accidentally create scaling conditions if for some reason the pH should spike (it does happen).