I have an above ground 18 ft pool that uses baquacil. Until last year we liked baquacil, but my pool went green and I mean GREEN, 3 times we spent alot of money to "fix" it. We used the baquacil because at the time of installation my daughter had a chlorine allergy. She has swam in a salt pool a couple of times with no reaction so we want to convert it to salt. We have a cartridge filter. We were looking at how to convert it but I am intimidated and need an absolute step by step. We were told not to hook up the salt chlorine generator up to the pool until we convert it, but how do we do that with out hooking up the generator? Please help us we are so lost.

Sherry

Welcome to TFP!

We have a good step by step of the conversion process and a number of people here who can walk you through the entire process. It does take some time and effort, but everything will be much simpler once you complete the conversion. I agree, the salt chlorine generator (SWG) should not be installed until the conversion is complete.

One thing you should know is that salt pools are chlorine pools. Very few people are actually allergic to chlorine, most people who think they are allergic are actually allergic to chemicals that build up when a chlorine pool is poorly maintained.

I just completed my conversion from Baquacil to a Aquatrol SWG.
It took a little time but man is it going to well worth it.
Baquacil worked fine the first 3 yrs we had our pool, after that every year we would get this lovely pinkish crud growing inour pool that cost lots MORE money to get rid of (if it got rid of it at all). Finally got tired of fighting the resistant crud in our pool and decide to make the switch this spring when we opened the pool.
We went with the SWG mainly due to the fact that our neighbors use one on there in ground pool and never had the problems that we have had over the past 4 years with Baquacil.
I can definately tell you this: Your pool water will change a lovely color of green until all of that old Baquacil junk is gone from your water!!
Yes, everything I read says not to turn on the SWG until you have your water balanced and the Baquacil is gone.
I used lots and lots of non-chlorine shock from my pool store to get rid of the baquacil but i also read where you can just use bleach to accomplish this too.
Luckily for me all of my other numbers were looking good once i got rid of the Baquacil so i simply added 8lbs of CYA, 2 lbs of Chlorine turbo shock, about 360 lbs of water softener salt crystals( you have to make sure they are 99% pure or higher), and turned on my SWG.
Now I'll wait a couple of days to test the water and see where all my numbers are at after the SWG has a chance to run.
p.s. the water already looks better than last year!!

sorry I also forgot to mention that we changed the sand in our filter once our Baqucil reading was 0.