Help! Big Time!

[ChuckD]

What Simmons99 said and...

The reason you need the FAS-DPD test is:

1. because you will initially need to 'shock' your pool, or super-chlorinate, your water to kill the algae. This means over chlorinating to some high level, and keeping that level for a couple days. That level depends on how much water you have in your pool and the amount of CYA that may be present. CYA (cyanuric acid or stabilizer) acts to lock up the chlorine so it doesn't burn off so fast. Shock levels of chlorine can't be measured accurately with the OTO you mention.

2. FAS-DPD will give you the two components of you need to know about, 'free chlorine' (FC) and 'combined chlorimines' (CC). The OTO kit will only give you the FC but you also need to know CC as this tells you if your chlorine is actually killing something (if there's still algae present).

After the shock phase is complete and your water's clear (usually 3 to 5 days), you'll let your chlorine level drop to swimmable levels and only need to add some bleach once or twice a week to maintain.

Get Mike Smith's BleachCalc program to help you with calculations (it's free and no installation necessary):
http://home.earthlink.net/~mwsmith70/data/BleachCalc262.exe


Since your pump/filter aren't due till Friday, why not mail order the test kit(s)? Believe me it'll be worth it and make helping you much easier.

(edit: Do Not add any of those chems you list in another post here. especially the chlorine tabs. They contain CYA, AKA stabilizer. CYA is good and necessary, but once it's there, it ain't easy to get out so if you overdo it, you end up having to dump some of your pool water and refilling to dilute it. And since the more CYA in your water, the more chlorine you need to add, you want to have some control (by testing) over how much you CYA you add. We can figure this all out once we know what the present condition of your water is)

C.