Best pool brushes according to redditors

The first and best thing you can do is go to TroubleFreePool.com and read everything in their Pool School section. Make sure you pay extra attention to the sections on the SLAM protocol and the chemical info. Feel free to message me (or post over there) if you have any questions.

Regardless of what people might have told you, pools can be pretty easy to take care of, especially after you get them going. Preventative maintenance is way easier than falling behind. Owning a pool is like having a pet: Even if you don't want to play with it, you still have to feed it. It's also like brushing your teeth: you can spend pennies/day, every day, or not do it for awhile and spend thousands of dollars fixing things.

As for basic equipment:

• A pool pole that you attach everything to.
  
  
• A pool net that attaches to the pole for fishing out stuff (leaves, acorns, things like that -- note this net has an angled/beveled bottom so you can 'scrape' it along the bottom of the pool to lift leaves and stuff off and into the netting)
  
  
• A vacuum head that you attach to the pole, and attach a vacuum hose to, to suck out stuff that you can't get with the net.
  
  
• A vacuum hose that attaches to the vacuum head on one end, and likely to your skimmer on the other end. This uses the suction produced by your pool pump to suck things out of your pool.
  
  
• A pool brush -- I use the "wall whale" model but any of them will work fine. You use this to brush the walls and side of your pool to help keep them clean. If your pool ever goes green, you'll have algae on your walls and bottom and you use this to brush that off the walls and into the water so the chlorine can help kill the algae.
  
  For a testing kit, I highly recommend you avoid testing strips, and splurge a bit for the TF-100 test kit with the SpeedStir, and the XL option. It's expensive, and worth every penny. If you're going to be closing this pool soon for the winter, I'd wait to buy the testing kit in the spring so your testing reagents are as fresh as possible when you open the pool.
  
  If you go the TroubleFreePool route, you'll be a large purchaser of bleach. I buy it about 15-gallons at a time from Wal-Mart -- just plain, unscented bleach. Anything else adds unneeded and unnecessary chemicals to your pool. Pay attention to the date code on the jug ("19250" means it was manufactured in 2019 on the 250th day of the year, newer is better since chlorine degrades over time), and the percentage of chlorine in the bleach -- most generic laundry bleach is 6%, the extra cheap stuff (which you don't want) doesn't even show the percentage so don't buy it! "Pool chlorinating liquid" from Wal-Mart is 10% bleach, and some pool stores sell 12.5% bleach.
  
  My 20k-gallon pool usually takes about a half-gallon/day of regular 6% bleach to keep the chlorine levels stable (sometimes added every day, sometimes added every 2-3 days). Other than initial setup in the spring when I add about $15 worth of chlorine stabilizer, and the occasional small dose of muriatic acid to keep the pH down, I rarely have to add anything else. Maybe a little baking soda when I first open in the spring, but nothing crazy. 99% of the "chemicals" I put in my pool is just plain bleach, and my water stays crystal clear and all chemical levels within range, all the time.