pH near 8 and possibly rising

[PoolDoc]

I think so -- I'm not completely sure I take your meaning.

But all forms of chlorine have side effects:

• Bleach has the fewest, and only adds chlorine & salt.
• Dichlor adds chlorine, stabilizer, and lowers the pH.
• Trichlor adds chlorine, some stabilizer, and lowers the pH quite a bit.
• Calcium hypochlorite adds chlorine, alkalinity, calcium, and raises the pH some.
• Salt water chlorine generation adds chlorine and raises the pH some.

These side effects may be good, bad, or indifferent.

For example, if you fill a pool with high pH / high TA water, dichlor's effects are ALL good: you shock the pool to get levels up, and the CYA also goes up, and the pH also goes done! But, if you use dichlor in a California pool with water that tends to be acid and is already high in CYA . . . then the side-effects are all bad.

So, for dichlor, trichlor, & cal hypo . . . we can't answer the question, "Is this good for my pool?" without knowing quite a lot about your pool. And, since one of the critical bits of info is CYA level -- at which 'guess-strips' are particularly bad -- we constantly end up whining about, "Please get a good test kit!"

We usually recommend bleach in unknown situations precisely because we often don't know enough about the pool to match side-effects and needs. (We also recommend it because it's almost always unavailable in un-gooped-up form!)