Overwhelmed by all the pool chemistry

[darylrue]

Holy criminey. We have had a pool for 5 years proceeded by those Intex pools from the smallest to largest the previous 10 and 3 hot tubs. With the hot tubs we just put 3-4 small chlorine tabs in from time to time (few days to a week) and has always been fine. We had to drain the pool the year before last (prior to that we just put in the tablets all the time and shock it here and there but had too much stabilizer (did not know that could happen)... now that we are doing some more testing and I read this thread about startup issues, I wonder how the heck we are going to get this stuff down.

I think I am in need for a pool chemistry for dummies water management flowchart.