Newbie in Louisiana Test Results. Help!

[rfreeman]

Just bought a house in North Louisiana with an 18,000 gallon 16x32 vinyl pool. After reading Ben's site and the forum, i decided to take matters into my own hand. I bought an HTH 6 way test kit from Wal-Mart last night. Heree are the first test results:

TC - below .5
PH - 8 - 8.2
TA 130 ppm
CYA 20-30 (am I supposed to look directly down from the top of tube? If so, this number is corect. The last marked line is 30 and I went past it.)

Tell me where to go from here!! Thanks in advance guys and gals.

[duraleigh]

Good morning,

1. Get your pH down into 7.0 - 7.4 range....sooner rather than later

2. You'll need some chlorine in your pool....a lot of it...purchase maybe 10 or so jugs

3. Read all the "stickies" in each forum here. That'll answer a lot of your questions and lead to some more.

4. download mwsmith2's bleachcalc....use it carefully for all the things you'll put in the pool. muriatic, CYA, chlorine, etc.

[rfreeman]

Thanks for the quick reply! I am using a Mac, so the bleachcalc won't run. Is there any other calculator online that you know of?