brown to now green

[Watermom]

We appreciate your post and efforts to help others but unfortunately, your advice is not quite what we recommend.

Testing only once a week and with dip strips is likely to lead to problems down the road. The only way to have long-term success with a pool is through regular testing with a good drops-based test kit like the Taylor K2006 and making chemical additions based on those numbers. Knowing your CYA level is an important thing and then matching your chlorine doses to that CYA level is one of the key ingredients to keeping a pool safely sanitized and algae-free. http://pool9.net/cl-cya/

I'm glad you have thus far had success but I'm afraid that is unlikely to always be the case for you unless you follow what we teach here on the forum with a little more consistency.

[CarlD]

I second Watermom's disagreement. It IS possible to maintain a pool with fairly lackadaisical testing and chlorination, but only for a VERY short term--and very great risk. It is NOT a good idea!

[PoolDoc]

@ CarlD, WM: To the contrary, I've seen people 'get lucky' with their pools, and stay that way for years. This is something I've seen more locally, then on PF . . . because people come to PF *after* they are having problems. I don't have any idea what the % is, but it's more than 10%.

Of course, nobody knows in advance who's going to get lucky. And, I've seen even more pool owners (and former pool owners) swear "Never again!" about pools, because they were NOT among the lucky 10+%.

I just wanted to point that out, to explain why some people -- for entirely practical reasons -- don't see the need for "all this complicated stuff", precisely because they've been able to operate their pool successfully for years without it.

Something that also happens, though less so now that trichlor and dichlor have totally pushed cal hypo out of the market, is that pool owners stumble onto some of the very, very simple methods that can work for sand filtered pools, using cal hypo, and filling with relatively soft water. Keep in mind that I was able to operate a HEAVILY used indoor fitness pool with NOTHING but cal hypo plus 1/2 - 1 gallons of muriatic acid PER YEAR. I did this for nearly 10 years. Folks with outdoor pools have to add stabilizer to that, but some pool owners do work out, largely by accident, some very simple and very successful versions of that method.

If cal hypo was more readily available, I'd promote that method more.