How do you open an above ground pool without using expensive chemicals? I had the list once, but lost it.?

Question:I know there are household items (such as baking soda, etc.) that can be used, but I can't find the list and directions I once had. There was also something with copper, I think. Some things had to be purchased, but not at a pool store, and not the regular pool chemicals, which can turn out to be costly. Any help will be appreciated. Thank you.

Answers:
Baking soda, 20 Mule Team Borax, household bleach. You don't need copper nor do you need calcium hardness chemicals for an above ground vinyl lined pool.

Alk-Up/Alkalinity Increaser/Alk + (sodium bicarbonate or in the pool store it is labled as sodium hydrogen carbonate) is nothing more than Arm & Hammer bakind soda which you can get at Costco or Sam's Club in ten pound boxes. Since this is a food grade product, you can add it directly to the pool without having to pre-mix it. It dissolves before reaching the bottom of a 4' pool and will cycle through the filter without problem. You can add it directly into your skimmers (if you are so equipped) or in front of your intake to the filter. Since it is a food grade product and is a finer grind than pool store chemicals you will need less of it than normal. Start off using half of the pool store equivalent and adjust up/down from there. Keep good records and you will know exactly how much 2 cups of baking soda will raise the alkalinity in your pool, do the math from there and you have a fool proof way of getting the exact alkalinity you want without the fuss.

pH Buffer/Optimizer (by BioGuard) (sodium tetraborate pentahydrate/decahydrate) is nothing more than 20 Mule Team borax found in the detergent isle of your local grocery store in a green box (you may have to look for it as there is usually only one facing of it amidst all the other products). It helps keep your pH from doing rebounds due to swimmers, etc. Again, it's a finer grind so you will need to adjust according to the needed amount for the size of your pool.

pH Up (soda ash) you can find in a local hardware store as soda ash. There really is no need to use this as the borax will increase the pH of your pool just fine (sometimes drastically until it mixes thoroughly).

Shock/Burn Out/Trichlor/HTH/any other shock or chlorine treatments is sodium hypochlorite or calcium hypochlorite (not recommended unless you need calcium hardness increased). Of course this is nothing more than bleach. With all the Ultra bleaches on the market it is kind of hard to find a standard 1 gallon bleach bottle anymore, but the Ultra's will work just as well as long as they aren't the scented types.

Calcium Increaser/calcium hardness manager is calcium chloride. Unfortunately if you have a gunite pool or one with plaster or grout anywhere in the water contact system, you will need to maintain this. Calcium will be leeched from these materials if you don't supply the water with appropriate calcium. Unfortunately there really isn't too much you can do outside the pool store for this, but it's a decent trade off for all the other chemicals you get elsewhere. You may be lucky enough to have a good calcium content in your fill water, so just checking to make sure the level is maintained may be all you need to do. If you have a vinyl lined pool and no plaster/grout in contact with the pool, then don't even worry about this. The pool store will throw a fit telling you that it will degrade your PVC piping, etc if you don't maintain calcium hardness, but PVC doesn't contain any calcium and neither do the metal components of filters/heaters/etc. If you have nothing in the pool that contains calcium the water can't leech it and thus destabilize or ruin it.

Chlorine Neutralizer is sodium thiosulfate. You can get this at a lot of different hardware stores as well. They generally don't have a name brand, so you may need to ask the folks there.

Alkalinity decreaser is muriatic acid (a dilute form of hydrochloric acid) and can be found at almost any hardware store. They don't usually have a brand name, but is sold as a cleaning agent.

This should be all the chemicals you would ever need to use in a typical pool. Below are some typical dosing requirements for 10,000 gallons of water:

Bleach (sodium hypochlorite): to increase to 5ppm of free chlorine, add 1/2 gallon of bleach to 10,000 gallons. Shock the pool as needed with 1 gallon per 10,000 gallons of pool water. No need to pre-mix. Check daily since household bleach does not contain chlorine stabilizer (cyanuric acid which you can purchase as such from a pool store if you feel you don't want to check the pool every day).
To reduce chlorine: to reduce by 10ppm use 10oz of sodium thiosulfate per 10,000 gallons of pool water. Please note, unstabilized chlorine will usually burn out of a pool in the course of a sunny day. You will never need to drop the chlorine after a shock if you use unstabilized chlorine (household bleach).

Alkalinity (sodium bicarbonate/baking soda): to increase 10ppm, add 1.5lbs per 10,000 gallons of pool water.
To decrease alkalinity (muriatic acid) by 10ppm, add 1.3 pints per 10,000 gallons of pool water.

Calcium Hardness (calcium hypochlorite bleach or calcium chloride powder from pool store): to increase 10ppm use 1.25lbs of 77% or 1lb of 100% per 10,000 gallons of pool water.

Chlorine stabilizer: cyanuric acid from the pool store (usually in powder or granulated form) to increase 5ppm use 6.5oz per 10,000 gallons of pool water. Ensure this level never maintains itself at 60+ppm as it binds the free chlorine and will not allow it to work in the pool.

pH Buffering agent (borax): Since this will increase the pH of the pool you can use it to bring the pH up if needed. You only need to use this as a buffer if you experience daily fluctuations of pH and are having a hard time maintaining a constant 7.3 or 7.4 (ideal for human body as it matches perfectly 99% of the body chemistry in the world). I would love to give you a break down of how much is needed, but since this varies widely depending on need you will have to experiment. Start off with a couple cups and record the results after 4 hours or so and adjust from there.