Supplies Preparation for Pool Arrival

[RedwingT]

You may need to do some minor tweaking on your pH and TA at the outset, but we won't know that until we know what your fill water is like. When you get the test kit (do you mean the K-2006?), run a set of tests on your fill water and we can help you go from there.

This is the test kit I have in my cart. I haven't ck'd out yet as was waiting for info from the pro's here. I take it this isn't the test kit I should get?

http://www.walmart.com/ip/HTH-6-Way-Test-Kit/17043668

Thank you for the info of using chlorine to balance. The SWCG directions didn't mention this. They say dump 110/120 lbs. of salt and brush bottom of the pool to speed up dissolving process. Then run the filter pump for 24 hours to thoroughly dissolve salt. After the 24 hour pump run to then turn on the SWCG and set the system to desired operating time.

So I shouldn't put the salt in either until I have the correct balance and then add salt and use the SWCG. Once I have the water balanced won't dumping in 120lbs of salt mess everything up or am I not going to need that much because the water is already balanced by the bleach and I'm not using the SWCG and Salt to actually balance my water after my fill? I would assume I will be adding salt to regulate my chlorine level once the water is balanced. I really want to stay away from chlorine as much as possible, it really irritates me and my son. I do understand the SWCG is a chlorine generator, just not as harsh as actual chlorine.

I will def pick up some stabilizer, muriatic acid and a cpl gallons of bleach beforehand.

[aylad]

You'll need to check the manual that comes with your SWCG unit to see how high your CYA needs to be--each unit has its own requirements, but that level is designed to help the SWCG function at its most efficient. Addition of salt to balanced water isn't going to mess anything up.

You say that you"do understand the SWCG is a chlorine generator, just not as harsh as actual chlorine"....but you are using actual chlorine to maintain this pool. The only difference is that it's being generated from the salt in the water, rather than being added manually, but it's still chlorine! Actually, chlorine rarely is an irritant--it's usually inadequate amounts of chlorine that are forming chloramines in the water that are the irritants. Hopefully you'll be able to get your pool started off right, so that won't be an issue for you.

Regarding the test kits--if you have to order the hth 6-way and wait for it to be delivered anyway, you could save yourself some time by just ordering the K-2006 and the salt kit instead. You'll need the salt kit either way, and the K-2006 tests for everything the 6-way kit does, and more....we usually just recommend the 6-way for people to use while they're waiting for the K-2006 to arrive.


Janet