Water Chemistry for pool owners??....

A few years ago I looked after a pool of a family member that migrated overseas, the power was off for three months and if only the grass was as green as the pool the garden would have been awsome.
I went the route of the pool shop and they tried to offload almost nearly every tonic emulsion and time travel device under the sun.
I took a step back and wondered how did my parents keep our pool chrystal clear all year with only 2 chemicals.
I hit the internet and did loads of reading and everything pointed to the same answer - PH, every chemical on the shelf that claimed to be the next best invention since the wheel first instructed you to get the PH correct.
Stock standard, HTH and acid or alkaline, but ensure that your total alkilinity is perfect else you are fighting a loosing battle.
Remember alkinity for gunnite, marblite and concrete pools differ from fibre glass.
So what I did was as follows.
got the alkilinty into the correct range for the type of pool.
Slowly brought the PH to the correct level over a couple of days. (takes a few hours for ph to settle)
Shocked the living daylights out of the pool with good 'ol stock standard HTH
Balanced the PH again as the trichloroisocyanuric acid in the HTH can fluctuate the PH in high dosages.
added a floculent and let the water stand till all the particles was at the bottom of the pool, about 24 hours
set the filter to waste and used one of those hand cleaners with the wheels and very slowly not to disturb the particles vacuumed the bottom of the pool clean.
Replaced the diaphram on the automatic cleaner as I experienced almost the same symptons of running for a while then stopping.