Chemicals for 12' x 36" Intex Self Supporting Pool

[aylad]

First of all, you need a drop-based test kit that will measure free and combined chlorine, pH, total alkalinity, and stabilizer, at a minimum--not test strips. Test your water and post your results here, and we should be able to help you figure out what you need to add.

You'll need enough bleach for now to keep the pool at 1-3 ppm Cl until you get some stabilizer in the water. There's a good calculator designed by mwsmith that you can use to figure the amount of bleach needed at this link
http://www.hal-pc.org/~mwsmith2/BleachCalc262.exe
You'll also need to buy some stabilizer (aka CYA, cyanuric acid, balancer, conditioner--it's all the same, the ingredient you want is cyanuric or isocyanuric acid). Add it per label instructions to target a 30-40 CYA level, but don't broadcast it into the pool...either add it through your skimmer and don't retest or backwash for a week because it's slow dissolving, or put it in a tied tube sock and hang it in front of your return to help it dissolve. During this process, you'll probably need to add the bleach daily to keep your Cl at 1-3.

You can use Borax to raise pH if you need to, and Arm & Hammer baking soda to raise alkalinity if you need to. All of this stuff can be found at WalMart, and is LOT cheaper than buying it under fancier names at the pool store!

Congratulations on the new pool, hopefully we can make it less of a PITA for you this time around!

Janet