Quote Originally Posted by lorettasweet
OK my new friends. I finally got to the pool store with my sample, here's the results that they printed for me. You guys let me know what I should do now.

Free Chlorine: .2PPM
Total Chlorine: .2PPM
Combined Chlorine: .0PPM
PH: 7.7
Hardness: 70 ppm
Alkalinity: 19 ppm
Cyanuric Acid: 5 ppm

We have a 27 foot round above ground pool. 52 or 54" deep I can't remember for sure.
...
Soooo, now what?
Loretta:
Youve gotten ALL kinds of advice, but I have to take issue with a lot of it. I NEVER advocate dumping tons of baking soda in at once. Your pool is 17,000 gallons so I would NEVER add more than a one pound box of baking soda at any time--EVER! It's always easy to add another pound of baking soda to raise total alkalinity but it's a royal pain in the patoot to lower it. You want it to be 80- 125 normally but with a vinyl pool I prefer 100-180ppm.

Your Chlorine is low--if your water is clear than one gallon of regular bleach should raise it to 3ppm. But if you have algae, you'll need to add 3 1/2 gallons to raise it to 10ppm. That is based on a CYA of 5ppm.

Your pH is FINE at 7.7--maybe a tad higher than I like but I wouldn't mess with it. Period.

Your CYA is low. You'll need to add some (stabilizer). Figure out from the directions how much you think you'll need to get the pool to 30-40ppm of CYA and add ONE QUARTER of that amount and wait a week. Test CYA again and if it's low, add that same 1/4 amount again and wait another week. CYA, like Total Alkalinity, is easy to raise but an ever bigger pain to lower--you must drain off water. So it's always better to try to NEVER go over your target.

Ignore hardness unless it approachs 500ppm. You CAN use Cal-Hypo for chlorine.

But the advice about test kits? Absolutely! There's another alternative that's also very good. If there's a Leslie's, near you, they may have the FAS-DPD test kit under their own label (made by Taylor). It's about $20. They also have a nice drop test kit, also made by Taylor, for $40 or $45--You use the FAS-DPD kit for chlorine rather than the one in the other kit.

But Ben's kit is the nicest of them and easiest to use.

With your current numbers you can safely use Tri-Chlor pucks or Di-chlor powder--but if you do so, don't add extra CYA--they will do it for you. Just make sure the pucks don't have copper in them.