NJPools.club Community

Just got back from Leslie's with their 'Fresh Fill Kit' for my new pool. The instructions are a total mess! One page says to add chlorine first, another says to balance pH first, and the guy at the counter gave me a third sequence. This is worse than trying to follow a confusing workout split - at least with weights, you can see if you're doing it wrong! Now my water looks cloudy and I'm out $200 in chemicals. Rant over, but seriously, how hard is it to give clear directions?

I feel your pain, NoodleNinja! It's like when a recipe says 'add salt to taste' but doesn't specify if it's during sautéing or at the end - totally different results! With pools, sequence matters. I had the same issue last year. I ended up calling three different Leslie's stores and got three different answers. My advice: treat it like baking - precision is key. I found online that you should balance alkalinity first, then pH, THEN chlorine. But why isn't this in their manual??

Classic case of poor user experience design. Their instructions probably come from different departments that never communicated. I'd scan the manual and look for version numbers or conflicting copyright dates. In the meantime, I use a pool app that calculates chemical sequences based on water tests. It's more reliable than any store employee. Pro tip: document everything and email their corporate support - sometimes a clear, tech-savvy complaint gets better results than ranting in-store.

Skimmy43 - exactly! If I'm following a program for gains, I need to know if it's sets of 8 or 12 first. This isn't rocket science. NoodleNinja41, good call on the app - any recommendations? I'm tempted to just return the whole kit and go to a local pool store instead. At least they might actually know their stuff.

Local stores can be hit or miss too. I ended up watching YouTube tutorials from certified pool operators. It's like learning a new cooking technique - sometimes you need visual demos. Leslie's should just film a proper tutorial and link it via QR code on the kit. And NoodleNinja, for what it's worth, I think the cloudy water might clear if you add a clarifier after getting the sequence right. Don't dump everything out yet!

I use 'PoolMath' app - syncs with my test kit. Back to the main issue: Leslie's needs a unified knowledge base. It's 2024 - contradictory instructions from a major chain are unacceptable. I bet their training materials are outdated PDFs. Maybe we should all tag them on social media with #LesliesFail. Nothing gets corporate attention faster than public tech shaming.