The pool is on the North End of Elbow Cay, we are very lucky we now have a choice of an Atlantic beach 200 yds on one side, an Abaco sea beach 200 yds on the other side and a pool in the middle. Am still taken with the new pool and have only been swimming from the beach twice in the last week. Have made a note to self to make sure I don't forget the beaches they are fantastic and as you said maintenance free. I guess we probably would have not put a pool in but we rent the house and need to up the rentals. On the plus side when we are in the Bahamas and the house is rented we live on a boat and are surrounded by the biggest pool with no maintenance requirements.

Which island is your house on?

We have put in a SWCG but are just trying to get this balanced. We put in the salt two days ago, pool was balanced according to Taylors water gram before I put in the salt. PH keeps rising, I put in 2lb bicarb yesterday to try to bring up the alkalinity which was between 40 and 50 ppm.

I am trying to find a source for borax to put that in, I am guessing that I will always have a problem with alkalinity due to the water here which is either rain water or RO water and from what I have read the borax will help with PH. I have put in CYA and was using household bleach and a floater with a tablet in which I believe will add CYA.

I am going to do a complete set of tests today and will post results.

I can get most pool chemicals here from the main island.

My test kit is a Taylors complete kit chlorine DPD we bought from Leslies in Fort Lauderdale but cannot find any code to match your recommended code so I am not sure if I I have anything missing.

It uses two test tubes effectively and I use drop counts for alkalinity, calcium hardness and to test for acid demand, but use colour match for chlorine and initial PH reading. There is also a CYA test which involves a black spot disappearing at the bottom of the smaller test tube.

We are going to have someone check the pool once a week when we are not here as we are missing 2 or 3 months at a time and I was going to bag up bicarb or just buy 1lb and 1/2 lb boxes with instructions on what to do.

I will post the results once I have them.

I do have one question

Which is first to correct

Alkalinity or PH

I need to do the best I can in terms of balance before I have to leave on the 11 November and then hope the pool lad we will be using can cope until we get back in Feb next year.