First post - Trouble maintaining Chlorine

[ubalr1]

Ubalr, welcome ot the forum! Your numbers are certainly from a pool store, honest folks who do their own testing get numbers that end with "0". Your cya and hardness results make a partial draining a good idea, but only if the fill water is lower in calcium. My best advice is to get a good test kit and learn how to use it, take control of your pool. Your pH is way low, dump a box of Borax in ASAP, and a couple gallons of regular (unscented) bleach in the pool -NOW (with your cya so high, you need a lot of chlorine) I'm sure that others who know more about the chemistry side will post, but do what I'v said as soon as you can. Good luck with the pool, you can escape the Biocrud cycle if you take matters into your own hands.

BTW, from what I find online, Borax and soda ash are not the same thing. Does Borax (also called sodium borate or sodium tetraborate) do the same thing chemically in the pool as Soda Ash (also known as sodium carbonate, sodium bicarbonate, sodium hydrogen carbonate)?

Never mind. I'm learning as fast as I can - the more I read through this forum. Add Borax to raise pH. Add soda ash to raise total alkalinity. Both problems (low TA and low pH) that I have according to my numbers. Right?