New to pool ownership

[Cruisermon]

Hello!

Long time forum user for all my other hobbies and so glad there is a great forum for pool ownership and care. Moved last Labor Day 2013 and now getting my new to me pool ready for summer. Dealing with high TA and low Ph. Using Ben's method and so far after a day and a half have lowered TA from 210 to 160. My chlorine is disappearing fast so I'll need to do some reading there. What is the best way to test for CYA? The previous owners left a box of test strips but after a little reading I tossed them and ordered a 5 way test kit. I know the test strip showed CYA but there is no test in the 5 way kit for CYA.

Glad to be here.

[PoolDoc]

The best way is the K2006 kit. You have to order it; we haven't heard of any pool stores selling them locally: http://pool9.net/tk/

You can test where your chlorine usage is coming from however. Evening to morning loss is something in the water; morning to evening on sunny days is usually mostly sun. If you are stable overnight, but lose during the day, you almost certainly need more stabilizer. The easiest way is to use dichlor, which adds 9 ppm of stabilizer for every 10 ppm of chlorine. See http://pool9.net/sams-dichlor24