We started our conversion this past SUN and as of this morning the water is so clear, it makes my eyes hurt (still has that faint yellow tint to it, but that is clearing as well)! We were very vigilant in keeping the FC up to 15 during the whole day and it really does make the process go quickly. There was no damage to our liner whatsoever. Last night was the first night that our FC did not drop by more than 1 so it's sooooo close, we can taste it.

If you can get the filter and hoses really clean while the pool is filling you will be ahead of the game. Maybe stick the hoses in a 5 gallon bucket of water with shock level chlorine? The DE filter will work much better when done I got sick of bumping constantly with the B-goo.

OK, so we finally got the water level back up again. I just poured in my first 2 gallons of chlorine. Since we had drained the pool, I was still surprised that it turned green. I thought it might take a little while to get the FC to hold, I just didn't expect the green. I am going to keep topping up the chlorine every hour.

BTW the guy at the new pool store ( not the baquacil store) was very nice in only getting what I asked for and not trying to sell me on anything else. I have done my homework here, so I knew just what I wanted.

Now it has been 1 hour since adding the chlorine. My FC dropped to 6FC. Does anyone know how much the FC will drop from just the sun without any CYA? Is this mostly dropping from baquacil or sun? I don't want to keep adding shocking during this beautiful sunny day if it just getting eaten by the sun.

Well it looks like I am a little late to help today, but here goes anyway.

You should expect to lose about half of your chlorine each hour that there is direct sunlight on the majority of the pool. Adding chlorine only in the evenings may take longer, but it will use less total chlorine.

I was amazed that the green had gone away in two hours! So I did add more chloine last night and it didn't turn green the second time. I was not losing too much FC's once the sun was off the pool. MY final check last night was
FC 9
CC 1
This morning was
FC 8
CC1.5

I am so glad I drained the pool, the conversion went so fast. I know we are not finished because the CC is still up, we will continue to shock today and tonight. Today I am going to add the CYA.

Now for my next problem, we are leaving tomorrow for vacation. I purchased some trichlor tabs to put in the skimmer. I have two questions about this:
1) with the cya being low (and I read that it can take a week to show up in tests) will the trichlor be stable enough for the week?
2)My pump has 2 speeds, should I run on high or low all week? Will the tabs in the skimmer dissolve at different rates depending on the pump speed? These are the tabs meant for the skimmer.

Tabs in the skimmer with the pump on low 24/7 will only work for about three days. After that, the tabs will have dissolved and there won't be any more chlorine. A trichlor floater could last the whole week, since they release chlorine more slowly that bare tabs do.

If you have any kind of cover, I would replace the filter media and add CYA today, then bring FC up to shock level and put on the cover just before you leave. Without a cover your best bet is probably a trichlor floater.

Thanks for thea dvice!

I do have solar cover and planned on outting it on for the week. Today my kids would really like to go swimming are these numbers safe to go in?

FC 4.5
CC.5
pH 6.8 (I just added a little pH increser that I had left over)
CYA Target 30 (just added this morning)
TA 70

You should make sure that the PH is at least 7.2 before swimming. There can be eye irritation at low PH levels.

Thanks to this forum my pool is now beautiful! We got back from vacation with a sparkling clean pool. Usually the filter is at too high pressure to filter by the time we come back, and the water ends up cloudy. Not anymore

I ended up shocking the pool, putting the solar cover on and adding smart sticks to the skimmer. I left the pump on low speed. When we got back there was still some chunks of the smart sticks left, so I am happy the FC stayed above the minimum!

So now I am trying to balance the water. The pH was a little low so I was trying to raise it to 7.5. I used the pool calculator and if I did it right said I needed to add ~50oz of borax. I added that today (I actually added 72oz) and the pH did not change at all. Here are my numbers, please let me know if I missed something? Should I just add more borax tomorrow? I am not sure why the pH didn't change at all.

Fc 7
cc .5
pH 7.2
TA 80
CYA 30
CH 70

Yes, go ahead and retest and add more Borax. Are the smart sticks still in the skimmer? That could be why the PH didn't go up.