Agreed. My advice is to go the PoolSolutions website and read everything you can while it is still up. Plan on dedicating some time to reading and exploring what is on there, and print some things off because we might not have access to it for very long.

The cheapest and best way to maintain your pool is with chlorine form sodium hypochlorite, which is plain old bleach. Look at the label of sodium hypochlorite from a pool store and the label of bleach from the cleaning isle, they are the same. You can get 8.25% from walmart for just under $3, and in some walmarts you can get it in the pool supplies isle at 10% for $2.5. For my vinyl pool, I use almost nothing else but occasional muriatic acid 1-2 times a summer and polyquat algaecide 2-3 times a summer, and I use dichlor granules to keep CYA in the pool, don't need to use that very much either unless I do a lot of backwashing or I have a pool party with lots of kids splashing water out! I don't use cal-hypo because vinyl pools don't need calcium and dichlor is cheaper.