greggb

Thanks for the great reply Richard! It seems like a tremendous amount of trouble I'd have to go through to do things perfectly. I can't imagine the average person who gets one of these pools at Wal-Mart (or a yardsale, like where we got ours) going to all of this trouble or being willing to learn so much about this. I could see all the trouble if it were permanent, but like you said, it's just going to be up for the summer. After that we will definitely dump it. I'll check out the article you mentioned. Would it be advisable then to just monitor the chlorine throughout the summer and add some as necessary? Just out of curiousity, could I use an aquarium chlorine neutralizer in a sample to neutralize the chlorine and hope to get an accurate pH reading? Also, I got the CYA even before I'd read your post. I measured out the suggested amount for a ppm of about 20-25 and poured it in the pool. Then I read the directions completely and found out I was supposed to pour it in the skimmer, which is up and running on the pool. From the looks of things this stuff isn't going to dissolve very quickly at all. I've tried stirring it and noticed that doesn't have much of an effect. I've also noticed that some particles are suspended in the water, which tells me it's definitely not safe for people. So now I have a bit of a mess. I guess the thing to do now is wait for it all to dissolve? It's been cool here lately (North Idaho) and I'm guessing the water isn't much over 65 degrees. It'd be easy enough for me to check it but I haven't gotten around to doing that. But anyway, I'm thinking that might be part of the reason all the granules are taking so long to dissolve. Thanks again for all of your help! Gregg

Hi all. We recently acquired a 5000 gallon above-ground pool. We filled it up a few days ago and today I'm trying to get a handle on the chemicals. I've been googling a lot and feel like I have a pretty good idea of how to go about things, but I was hoping to get some advice from some real-life people. I keep aquariums, and have some understanding of water chemistry... things like pH, buffers, etc. From what I'm reading I should be going for a pH of 7.2 or so, and a chlorine level of 2 ppm. In all the reading I've done I haven't heard much mention of buffers or the role they play in pH. Our water is hard and contains a natural buffer, so I'm anticipating that the pH Minus I'm adding won't have much effect on pH until the buffer has been broken down. I was wondering if there are any general rules regarding buffers in typical hard water? Or is the best plan to just add x amount daily until you get your desired pH? Our pool came with a test kit for pH and chlorine. I have aquarium test kits for pH and chlorine too... I'll probably use both and see how they compare. The kit that came with the pool mentioned that chlorine in the water would have a serious effect on the pH reading. Is that generally the case with pH tests, and if so, how can you get an accurate reading when there's pretty much always going to be chlorine in the water? I added some chlorine to the pool this morning. I've noticed it's not dissolving very quickly. I thought that might be related the alkalinity of the water (out of the tap pH=7.8), so I added some pH Minus too. As soon as the chlorine dissolves I'm going to run some tests and see where that puts me. And of course I have the kids asking me when they can get in the pool every 5 minutes. I'm really nervous about letting them get in if there's any chance that there's undissolved chemicals in the water. Is there a basic rule as to how long you should wait before allowing people in the pool after adding chemicals? Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance! Gregg