Super high combined chlorine

[themaccs]

P.S. : I thought I might back up a little bit and introduce myself and explain how i got here. I have been lurking in the backround, following advice here (sort of) for about 5 years. We were living in GA then and I found testing the pool myself and managing with a modified BBB (we used a chlorinator and occasionally some stabilized shock) pretty easy- and it beat trying to get a sample to the pool store for testing. It worked pretty well, but then our pool liner ended up getting bleached out and we wondered if it was from using the bleach. That didn't really make sense to me, but at my husband's gentle suggestion, we went back to pool store management of our pool. Then we were transferred here to Kansas in July of 2008 and bought a house with another pool. We continued managing the pool store way, and then for some reason last year I got concerned about that my CYA level might be way high (pool store seemed to ignore CYA) and did a test myself - the results were crazy - I think up around 170! We drained some water out of the pool a couple of times, and I got it down to around 100. I decided to leave it there for the season (now I know a big mistake) and manage with the BBB method and some algicide. This season we took the first couple of samples to the pool store, and while I think the testing methods were accurate and their advice was ok - using lithium chloride to shock at the level and frequency i was needing got really expensive really fast!!! So I started in again testing myself and using bleach. I got frustrated pretty quick because I couldn't keep FC in the pool. My husband's advice was to go back to the pool store and do whatever they suggested to get things fixed. I didn't really want to do that - the expense would have been ridiculous. So, I started searching this site to find an explanation and a plan for fixing the problem. I think i convinced my husband that the advice on here makes some sense and won his support in the process. So here we are, frustrated that this is taking so long and wondering if we will ever get it fixed. But I am fairly convinced that I would be messing with it all summer and swimming in a questionably safe pool if we continued with the pool store advice - not to mention the cost! This way, i am hopeful that once we get this issue fixed correctly, I might be able to enjoy the rest of the summer in an easy to maintain pool. So, thanks to all you experts for being here!