How much shock to use when starting up my pool?

Question

Im opening my above ground pool it is 15ft by 42 in. 3,600 gallons of water. The back of the bottle for the shock says 1 and half oz, my local pool store says 2 lbs. So my husband put 2lbs. Now im worried. We did the test strip thing and it says our free chlorine is high, and our ph is high

Answer 1

your chlorine is supposod to be high, that's what shocking is, over the next couple of days it will go down.  put some Muratic acid in it ASAP to bring down the PH.

Answer 2

my wife was sold shock and told to drop the whole 2 pounds in as well...  we have a 4600 gallon pool... the last two years it was ALWAYS a mess... cloudy white, then green, then scummy... and the pool store kept 'TESTING' samples and selling her chemicals 'to fix it'...

I drained it last july and followed the instructions on the shock package (home depot or lowes is just fine stuff)...  and the pool has been GREAT ever since!

You can double the dose for the FIRST shock... but I preffer to do a single dose day 1 and wait until the next day - if I think it is not getting better, I will put in the extra dose... but tooo much shock is sometimes WORSE than no shock at all!

I also use that blue stuff that 'clumps' extra chemicals to be caught in the filter and that works great too...  a couple days after you shock it - put some of that in - following the bottle directions - not the pool 'guy'...

Good luck... I do NOT trust pool stores anymore!