new home owner -- new pool owner -- clear as MUD

[Watermom]

Hi Andy and welcome to the Pool Forum. Until your kit arrives, (good decision to order that by the way) -- use your 6-way kit, but not the test strips. They are useless.

Until you get some CYA (stabilizer) in there, you're gonna have to add bleach 2 or 3 times per day. We recommend a CYA of 40-50 for most pools. You have a choice to make. You can just go ahead and add the CYA separately to get to 40-50 and be done with it or you can add enough separately to get to around 25 and then use your feeder for awhile and then stop doing so when you get to 40-50. (Clarify for me --- by feeder do you mean chlorinator and not just floaters?) Let us know which you prefer to do and we'll advise you from there.

Either way, for the first week or so, you'll need to test 2 or 3 times a day, and each time add enough bleach to take the chlorine back up to around 6. For reference, in your pool each quart of 6% bleach will add just about 1ppm of chlorine.

Here are some links for you to read:
Using Muriatic Acid Safely
Lowering Alkalinity Step-by-Step

Also, if you haven't already done so, please read the Best Guess Chlorine Chart in my signature below.

One last thing for now. To make it easier for us to help, if people will create a signature line with their pool specs, it keeps us from having to reread through posts to find out basic information. You can create a signature by clicking on 'settings' in the upper right-hand corner of the homepage. In your sig, please put type of pool, volume, type of filter, size of pump, whether or not you have a SWCG or any water features and the fact that you do or do not have a K-2006. Thanks!

Hope this helps. Let us know which of the two options you want to do for adding your CYA.

[Andyman33]

added my signature...
also, should I put the CYA in the chlorine feeder or in a sock? It is like a powdered granular type is all that i could fine?

[Watermom]

Do NOT put the CYA in the feeder. Put it in an old sock and hang it in front of your return jet. Give it a squeeze every now and then and it will help it dissolve faster. The powdered granular type is what you are looking for as long as the ingredients say cyanuric or isocyanuric acid. Are you going to add enough to take it up to 40 or only to about 25 and let your feeder take it the rest of the way? (Once your CYA hits 50, you don't want to use your feeder any more or else your CYA will continue to climb and you really don't want it any higher that that.

(Thanks for making the sig.)

[Andyman33]

I can't see my signature (or yours for that matter). As for the CYA -- I'll probably just get it to 25 for now and then let the trichloro that I already purchased bring it up slowly the rest of the way (ok plan?)
As for today -- I'm off and plan to bleach the crap out of this...
one more thing -- my filter right now has pressure at 25. What do I do? Backwash? how much water do I backwash out? Do I need a hose to keep it off my lawn to prevent the bleach from destroying it? A little advice for this would also be greatly helpful!! Thanks so much!

cya now in a sock in the feeder (put in 9 oz) this time -- calls for 33 oz total so will slowly add...

[Watermom]

To see sigs, I think you have to go back to the user control panel somewhere in the settings and enable it. I don't have time to look for it right now. See if you can find it and if not let me know and I'll look for it a little later.

CYA to 25 and then use feeder til it hits 50 is fine.

Backwash your filter. Always turn the pump off before you move the handle on the multiport. First move it to backwash. Watch the discharged water and backwash until the discharge (not the little sight glass) looks clean. Usually takes mine about 1.5 minutes or so, maybe a little less. Turn pump back off, put handle on rinse for about 15 seconds. Turn pump back off and put it back on filter. Note the clean pressure. That will be important to note because the way you tell it is time to backwash is whenever the pressure rises 5-10psi over the clean filter pressure. I have always backwashed right onto my lawn for years and it has never hurt it at all.

EDIT -- You don't have to add the CYA so slowly or it will take a long time to get it to register and during that time, you'll have trouble keeping chlorine in the pool. Go ahead and add it all to the sock. 9 oz. is only going to give you about 5ppm. It's going to take a little over 3 lbs. to add 25ppm. So, you need more than 33-oz.
Out the door for a bit to run some errands but I'll check back in on you later this afternoon.

[Andyman33]

ok added more cya to sock...no more than 18 ounces will fit though so added that much and will add more as it dissolves into the water. Just rechecked pool again -- pH 7.8, TC about 4 (tough with the yellow color matching) and Free chlorine on stick 0 (again i have dip sticks only to see if I can get ANY free chlorine in this pool!)
also, when should I backwash filter? and can i do it into grass or will chlorine kill it?

[Phillbo]

Don't backwash while adding the CYA.. You'll just flush it out .. You need to wait a week or so after adding CYA before you backwash.

If you just put the sock in , you may want to remove it (and add more ) , backwash and then start adding CYA.

[Watermom]

With the CYA in a sock that is hanging in front of a return, backwashing won't flush it out.

Andy -- If your pressure is 25, you need to backwash. Please reread my post #6 above for more about that.

Did you find how to enable things so you can see signatures?