Am I on the right track?

[Spensar]

The other thing, in the absence of your own kit, is get the pool store numbers for combined, total chlorine, and leave without buying anything more. They will give their recs, listen and say "thanks". If they are pushy say you have what you need at home.

[doggie]

I remember the first time we went to the pool store for water testing. This was a few years ago. We handed her our jar of water, and she simply stuck a test strip in, looked at it, then said 'your numbers are fine' !! I couldn't believe it!

The other pool place here in town did it with a test strip, then used some computer program to analize. When our alk was high, the program suggested adding 15+ gallons of muriatic acid! I didn't do that needless to say.