First year with a pool. Since getting everything balanced, I've been using the 3" Chlorine pucks to maintain chlorine levels. I'm reading some negative things about them on this site, like that they can mess with your CYA levels and/or mess up the Free to Total Chlorine levels.

So, since I'm out of pucks, I think I'm gonna switch to bleach.

So, I downloaded BleachCalc and ready to go. Here are my questions:

1. Everyone agree that getting rid of the pucks and switching to bleach is the right way to go?
2. On a 24,000 gallon pool, it seems that to raise my chlorine levels 1 ppm using 6% bleach, I use about a 1/2 gallon of bleach, correct?
3. How long after adding about a gallon of bleach can I hop in the pool?
4. Do I dilute it first (it's a vinyl pool) and dump it in the deep end, or do I add it through the skimmer, or do I dump it in undiluted?
5. Since the pucks slowly dissolve, and the bleach is added all at once, does the chlorine level maintain (assuming all your other levels are balanced). In other words, if I get it balanced on a Sunday, am I still probably good until the following weekend?

Thanks!