Swimming pool...chlorine low, PH high?

Question

I just got it completely filled up this morning put a chlorine tablet in the floater and tested it with the test strips a couple of hours after putting chlorine and everything looked fine except it showed lowest chlorine level 0/0 and PH at the highest level 8.4. What to do? It is an 18 ft. 42 in. pool and holds about 5500 gallons of water.

Answer 1

First I would shock the pool.  Shock is basically chlorine that is in a form that it will dissolve into the water quickly.  I would keep the chlorine tab that you have in the water while this is going on.  I would then wait a day or so.  I would do the chlorine first because some chlorine does not have a neutral pH and can through off the pH anyway (some chlorine is buffered to be more neutral - it depends on what you buy).  I would then test the total alkalinity and adjust that to be within range.  After the total alkalinity is within range then I would adjust the pH.

Shock:

http://www.lesliespool.com/browse/Home/P...

Alkalinity & pH adjusters:

http://www.lesliespool.com/browse/Home/P...

Answer 2

Put in a gallon of liquid chlorine, about a half of a bag of stabilizer