Help me get my wife off my back.....

[KurtV]

How will adding chlorine up to 15 ppm clear my pool? With my test strips the reading only goes up to 10. Could I have a higher level than that and not know it?

wildchild,
The high levels of chlorine will help oxidize the gunk in your pool and disinfect the water (i.e. kill the bacteria and algae, and other "bugs"). Anything lower will probably not get the job done.

It will be difficult to accurately test any chlorine level, and certainly higher chlorine levels, with test strips. Getting a good test kit will pay you huge dividends. The gold standard of chlorine tests is the FAS-DPD test; that will allow you to test up to 50ppm. You can buy a great FAS-DPD test kit here or you can search the web for a Taylor K-2006 test kit. An OTO test will give you a quick and dirty rough idea of chlorine levels up to about 5 ppm. You can go higher than that by diluting the sample with distilled water (here's a post that explains that; it's the eighth one down).

Read everything you can here on poolforum; especially the stickies at the top of the chlorine forum. I think those will give you a good handle on keeping a clean, sanitary pool. Don't hesitate to ask if you don't understand something. The good folks here are happy to help.