Hey everyone,

I'm a new homeowner and am new to maintaining a pool. I've recently taken 2 semesters of 100-level college chemistry and a 300-level organic chemistry, so I'm familiar with a lot of terminology and reactions going on in my pool. However, the previous owners of this home are my in-laws, so I'm getting some advice which I'm not 100% sure is correct, mainly that my father-in-law never did anything with adjusting alkalinity nor added any stabilizers.

ANyway, I've been going to a local pool store to get my water tested, and my first test read:

0 stabilizer
0 chlorine (it was burning off 1 gallon within 24 hours!)
7.8 pH
65 TA
120 CH

I followed their advice and added these chemicals, in this order:

.75 gallon of muriatic acid (31.25%)
3 gallons of 12.5% hypochlorite (this now seems high, but maybe ok?)
15 lbs of sodium bicarbonate
15 lbs of calcium carbonate (I have a vinyl liner, so I think this is unnecessary to add in the future)
5 lbs of cyanuric acid stabilizer

This treatment seems to do wonders for my pool, but we've since had a lot of heavy storms (a few tornados have blown through here in the midwest) and my levels are out of whack again. I did a chlorine shock (2.5 gallons) between storms and that held up for about 9 days until this past weekend. Now I'm trying to get things back in order, but I'm hearing conflicting advice at the store I've been going to (notably about shocking vs adding acid as the first step.)

That's it for now, but I'm sure I'll have follow up posts/questions in the future.