Chlorine troubles

[Cowtown]

Hello, newbie here trying to get things right in our pool.

We set up our pool a little over 2 weeks ago and I can't keep chlorine in it now.

Intex 17' x 48" (approx 6,000 gallons)
paper filter pump

I made the mistake of buying all the chemicals from walmart before I found this site. I would like to go the BBB route. I've gone out and bought those items as well as dichlor shock (Sam's).
I also have the 6 way test kit.

About 5 days ago the chlorine seemed to disappear and I can't correct it.

2 days ago I added 2 cups of bleach in a span of 4 hours with no changes.

Then yesterday morning I added 8 ounces of the dichlor shock.

Three hours later it looked like this.
Cl/Br - 3 6
pH - 7.2
I didn't test anything else at that point.

About an hour later those numbers were at zero again.

A couple of days ago I had these results.

Cl/Br - zero
pH - 7.2
Alkalinity - 100 ppm
Hardness - 150 ppm
CYA - 50 ppm

Thanks for taking the time to make a site like this so helpful to so many people.
If I decide to upgrade and buy the fancy test kit you recommend, I will use the link provided thru your site.

[PoolDoc]

If you see this in time, add 1 lb of dichlor (10 ppm on your pool) to your pool this evening, and then test your chlorine in the morning. The results will tell us of you have some sort of unresolved chlorine demand.

2 cups -- 1 pint -- of bleach in your pool is only about 1 ppm of chlorine, which will disappear very rapidly under normal conditions. A more reasonable daily dose would be 1/2 gallon, till you've gotten your pool running smoothly.

[Cowtown]

Thanks PoolDoc,

I added the pound of dichlor shock last night and here's what I have this morning.

Cl - reading greater than 5 10
pH - 7.5

Does this Cl reading make it unsafe to swim? If so, at what number is it safe to return to our pool?

Thanks for the help.

[Watermom]

It won't stay that high for long and it is not unsafe to swim in although if it is 10 (which I doubt) then you would want to wear an old swimsuit. Pools without CYA in them lose chlorine fast. After you use dichlor for a bit, your CYA will build up and you won't be losing chlorine so fast. (I'm not quite sure what you mean by 5 10, though.)

Although you should do yourself a favor and order the good Taylor K2006 kit, for now, you can force your kit to read chlorine readings higher than 5 with a dilution method. Use distilled water for this and not tap water. Info here: Testing Without a Good Kit

You might want to take a minute and read the Best Guess Chlorine Chart in Ben's signature above. It explains the connection between chlorine and CYA readings.

Have you read the 'recipe' for starting an Intex pool? http://www.poolforum.com/pf2/showthr...p-routine-care.