Quote Originally Posted by Watermom View Post
How does your water look?
Looks crystal clear, but there's a layer of stuff on the bottom of the pool that keeps coming back, as soon as a day or two after vacuuming. Some of it obviously is grass clippings and bits from the arbor vitae trees that line our property line, but the other stuff... I'm not sure if the stuff that tends to pile up along the liner seams is dirt clusters or not.

Quote Originally Posted by Watermom View Post
Why would you need to shock? You do need to add some chlorine so your chlorine levels don't drop below the minimum required based on your CYA ( http://pool9.net/cl-cya/) but not sure why you think you should shock.
I thought it was good form to shock after a heavy rain and/or every 10-14 days. Is the latter idea a pool store gimmick to increase chlorine sales? Either way, I think a goal of 3-5 sounds good to me since I'm not sure if my CYA level of 50 is correct. Is keeping it in this range as good as shocking it every so often?

For backwashing purposes, is it a big deal to have that much chlorine in the water that's being pumped into the street (and thus into the lakes)? My FIL said that it's best to backwash and rinse when the chlorine gets down to near zero so it doesn't kill the grass in the front of our property (the filter waste line goes from the backyard to the driveway, where it mostly goes into the street but some of it goes down the sidewalk.) I'm curious if that's good advice or not?