Hi,
I'm in the process of opening a 25,000 gallon IG Vinyl pool. For the past few days, the chlorine has been dissipating at a SICK level.

The first thing I should tell you is that the pool hasn't been opened in 3 years or so. The water is cloudy and dirty, and i've been working on it for the past 4 days (friday - monday).

So, the pH is low but not too bad. It is around 6.8, and i adjust it daily with Pool store PH+ and baking soda. The alkalinity is on the low side, around 40ppm. I just added 8 lbs of baking soda and am waiting for the results. The stabilizer is suprisingly OK - 30-50 lbs.

I'm surprised that the chlorine dissipates so fast. I shocked last night with 2lbs of Calcium Hypochlorite, and at 5pm today the test strips shows 0.5ppm of free chlorine. Is this normal?

From the "STICKY" post, i read that the chlorine is probably destroying all the old Urea and Ammonia in the water, and that I should keep adding bleach to keey CYA(stabilizer) from getting too high.

Am i on the right track?


I'm about to post some pics so you guys can see what a disaster my pool was when I started. Cheers.