Intex SWG.

[Watermom]

To help you determine how much bleach to add when you test, with a volume of 8260, each quart of 6% bleach will add about 1.8ppm of chlorine to the pool.

The only way to lower calcium hardness is to do a partial drain and refill. As long as you don't use anything which will take it any higher and as long as you aren't having cloudy water problems, I wouldn't worry about it right now. But, you do need to get that alk down. For this small pool, I'd probably use 1 cup of muriatic acid at a time. Be careful with that stuff!

I'd probably just live with the strips you currently have until the kit comes.

Add some muriatic acid. A half hour later, add some bleach -- enough to get up to about 6ppm.. A half hour later, GO SWIM!! When you get out of the pool tonight, test cl and pH again and add more acid if still high. Make sure you run your pump for several hours after adding.

[sunNfun]

Just wanted to say THANK YOU!! We add some bleach and muriatic acid and are well on our way to getting the levels corrected. At present, the water looks crystal clear - beautiful. The test strips are still showing the PH too high, so we'll keeping working at it, slowly. Order the test kit as you suggested, hopefully it will be here by the end of the week. The kids went swimming last night and have been in and out all day!! So much fun already : ) It's a little cold for me yet, but I have put my feet in. Again THANK YOU for all the advice.

Oh, still don't know any thing about the copper ion strips...anyone?