5 days of "burn out"???

[chem geek]

Yes, you will probably shoot for around 300 ppm CH, but you are already at 180 from your tap water (are you sure about that? you tested it with the CH test? the "hardness" number from water companies isn't the same as CH since it includes magnesium as well as calcium). Since the calcium level should rise if the plaster is new, your PB's advice of just using Cal-Hypo for chlorine is probably good enough for now. If you're at about 200 ppm CH, you're in pretty good shape and can just let the plaster plus your Cal-Hypo get you up higher.

My water isn't nearly as "hard" so that's why I thought you'd have to use Calcium Chloride to get your CH up faster, but you don't have to do that with your "already high CH" water.

Richard

[steveinaz]

Ok, thank you Richard appreciate your help/expertise with this stuff. You rock man.

I did the Taylor calcium hardness test on our tap water and got the 190ppm figure. the 180ppm I quoted earlier was incorrect.

[huskyrider]

Just as two attorneys interpret a particular law differently, so do pool guys.

I completely disagree with your pool builders start up procedure.

I start up my pools with a minimum of chlorine for the first two weeks, around 1 to 1.5ppm. During this time I'll get my hardness to 200 +or-, my stabilizer in line for the type of chlorinating system, and strive to keep my PH in the mid 7's.
You'd think that a guy with my kind of experience could tell you why, but I can't. It's just what I was taught in the late 70's by a man who'd been building pools since the early 50's.
I've taken everything he taught me as the Gospel itself, LOL.

This is how I learned about BBB, That's the thing I really loved about this website. I known this method for almost 30 years and it's always been awesome. I'll tell you guys this for fact, my pool is 120,000 gallons and is always sparkling, it's very easy to maintain good chemistry in spite of its size.

See ya,
Kelly