Here's my numbers

[waterbear]

One more: PB said in this area, most pools end up with mustard algae at some point in the summer. He recommended that I call him when this happens, and he will come out and put in a copper algaecide that is made a special way so that the copper won't come out of the suspension and damage the liner. Does this make sense? I asked him about using polyquat, but he said the copper stuff works better.

Judy

Chelated copper (that is what your PB was referring to) can and will come out of suspension and deposit in your pool or filter. It just does it at a slower rate. This can be verified by montoring the copper level in the water by testing. It will ususlly fall within a period of about 3 months or so. Where did the copper go? It deposited in your pool, filter,and pipes as a stain that can redissolve under the right conditions (and make your water turn green)! Non chelated copper will come out of solution very quickly by comparison, usually within days or weeks. Copper IS effective at controlling algae but, IMHO, is not the best choice for several reasons which are really too technical to get into here.
check out this thread for some more info
http://www.poolforum.com/pf2/showthread.php?t=98

IMHO, polyquat is a much better choice.
I would bet the reason that 'most pools in your area end up with a mustard problem' is because the pool owners are not keeping tabs on their pool chemisty or relying too much on bad pool store advice (like 'just put another trichlor tab in your floater and open it up a bit more to make sure your chlorine is at 3 ppm' when their CYA is already at 90 ppm!).
IF you keep on top of your pool and have proper FC for your level of CYA chances are you will not have an algae problem.

Several people on this board do add polyquat as a preventative and that is fine if you decide to to that.

[jnorris]

I just want to say how much I appreciate all the great advice and words of encouragement. When we decided to put in the pool, I knew I would be the one doing the work, since my husband works out of state and is gone alot. I started reading these boards, but all the technical stuff was really scary, and I was beginning to think I would have to hire a pool service. Now I am confident I can do this, as long as I have the help of all of you experts! Thanks for all the help!

Judy