A pool newbie with a few questions!

[aylad]

Hi, and welcome to the forum!!!!

In an effort to keep you from getting what we call "pool-stored" anymore than you have been, let me advise you to take back the pH increaser (the same thing as 20-Mule Team Borax from the laundry aisle at the grocery store, but 4x the price). While you're there, take a fresh sample of the pool water in with you and have the store test it, using drop-based testing, not test strips. If they use test strips, get it tested at a different store.

The test strips are not very accurate, to begin with, so you don't know for sure that the levels you're testing are really as high as you think. Secondly, the high chlorine levels will cause even drop-based testing to read pH as falsely high, so you don't want to try to change pH or Alk while your chlorine is that high.

We also need to know what the ingredient is in the "shock" that you put in--is it dichloro.....ethylene, or is it cal-hypo? Have you added any stabilizer (CYA) to the pool? If so, how much? What kind of filter do you have? Sand or Cartridge?

The best thing you can do for yourself is get a complete set of tests run on your pool water, including free and combined or total chlorine, pH, alk, and calcium (not normally important in a vinyl pool, so PLEASE don't buy any from the pool store, no matter how hard they insist!). Post those readings here. In the meantime, put the strips away and buy a drop-based test kit. They can be pricey, but believe me when I say that they will save you their cost hundreds of times over in the next few years of pool ownership. YOu can buy them online, or sometimes at the pool store. Once you have a complete set of test numbers, post them here and we can advise you from there.

Also, read the "stickies' at the top of each of our forums, and it will help explain a lot for you. It's a lot of information, and at first can be confusing, but it will eventually "click" and you'll realize that pool-keeping can be pretty easy if you don't let the pool store mess it up for you!!

Oh, and by the way--check the ingredient list on your trichlor tabs--if one of the ingredients is copper, take those back too, if you can. Most pool store tabs don't contain it, but Walmart's do. You don't want to add metals problems to a perfectly good pool!

Once we get your pH where it needs to be, you won't have to keep adding the decreaser daily, so don't worry about that.

Welcome to the forum, and we'll be happy to help get you off to a good start with your pool!!

Janet