Hi Michael --
It's not a "problem", I'm just trying to simplify my life! My, shall we say, "issues" are:

1) I have a new Pacific Pools liner; Pacific says to maintain FC at 1-3ppm. The old liner was temporarily patched last fall - 2 years old - and I was amazed at how much darker the patch was than the rest of the liner. Soooo, to help preserve the color of the new liner, I'd like to maintain the lowest FC possible, without compromising sanitation.

2) Aquarite recommends a FC level of 1-3ppm as "ideal".

3) My drop test kit shows a FC level of 1.0 as "ideal".

3) The first year we had the pool & the Aquarite, I actually did maintain FC at 1-3ppm and my pH was always perfect & I had no other problems. That may well have been dumb luck. The only thing I did differently last year was maintain higher FC levels because I was worried my water was not sanitary; my pH went up and I had to start adding stuff to bring it down.

If soda ash (sodium hydroxide) raises pH, and is a by-product of CL, then it would make sense that maintaining the lowest safe CL level would minimize the soda ash and thus the pH?? I guess the bottom line is, why is the higher CL level recommended here?

I appreciate your comments.
PAT

PAT