I have a 24' round above ground pool, 25 gage vinyl liner, 2.5 hp pump, aquabug vaccuum. I started converting it from baquacil to chlorine 2 weeks ago. I went to the local pool store and they have been telling me what to do according to testing the water. First they said to put in a bottle of FLIP IT. Did that. Took another sample over and they said bacquacil was gone so time to balance. The first week they said put 2 lbs of shock in daily and run the filter 24/7. did that, cleaning the cartridge filter off daily. The pink goo was everywhere. The water turned brown and then green. Saturday I took more water over there to test and they told me to put 21 lbs of alkalinity, 10 lbs of calcium and 9 lbs of shock in three treatments every six hours. Did that. Water is still really green. When we put the shock in, the water turns a funny brown/green color and it gets stuff floating around on top of the pool. It is testing 7.8 ph, 180 alkalinity, 3 total chlorine and 0.5 free chlorine and very low reading on the stabilizer. I don't know what else to do. My husband is threatening to get rid of the pool. Do you have any suggestions?

Welcome to TFP!

Flip It really doesn't work the way the pool store said/implied. You need to finish the conversion process, which you are noticably less than half way through. We have a great write up on the whole process and lots of people who will be happy to walk you through the whole thing.

I forgot to put that it's a 13,500 gallon pool. I put 4 lbs of shock in it last night and turned the return jet to the side so that it would circulate better. Cleaned out the filter cartridge again. Put another tablet in the skimmer. Today the readings are as follows: (this is a test strip) Hardness 250; Total chlorine was, the color of the block was somewhere between the 3 and 10; the free chlorine was 3; the ph was 7.8; Alk 180; stabilizer 0. I added 2 lbs more of the Refresh dry granular chlorine which is what the pool store sold me to use as shock. About an hour and 1/2 after putting the 4 lbs of shock in last night, the readings were hardness 1000; TC-20; FC 10; ph 8.4; alk 180, stabilizer 50. The shock did not turn the water brown and did not put the goo on the top of the water this time so I assume it has gotten all the baquacil out. But the water is still green and I can't see the bottom. I vaccuumed it last night also. It's not as dark of a green but still green. It is supposed to really hot this weekend and I would so like to be able to get in but scared to as long as the water is green. A friend that works at the water treatment plant suggested I put some alum in it to get any "debris" in the water to sink to the floor and vaccuum it out. He said it will help bring the ph and alk down also. Any suggestions?

You should not swim until you complete the process. Read the article Jason linked you above:
http://www.troublefreepool.com/pool-school/baqua_chlorine_conversion

Use only liquid chlorine aka bleach to finish this up

You need a good test kit to finish.

Stabilizer/CYA slows the conversion process down so stop adding granular shock/tablets, etc. as these increase your CYA level.

You should now that FC levels over 10 will make the PH read false high so you should not try to adjust ph when shocking the pool.

Hope this makes sense...

Refresh dry granular chlorine is 68% cal-hypo. In addition to adding chlorine it raises your CH level. You can use that for a while, but 25 lbs will get your CH level up as high as you should allow the CH level to go.

There is still baquacil in the pool, though no where near as much as there was originally. If you keep adding chlorine you will get rid of all the baquacil eventually.

Alum/floc won't help. This green/murky color isn't an algae problem, it is part of the conversion process.

The PH test results are not valid when the FC level is high. Your PH was not really 8.4, it is probably still around 7.8. When you have a moment when the FC level is 5 or lower, adjust the PH down to around 7.4.

I was wondering about the Refresh also. I saw that it had calcium and stuff in it. Thank you for your advice. I'll stop by the store and get some Clorox on my way home from work. Thank you. This site is great for us "pool dummies" I want to switch to salt water next year but the pool store said I had to get it converted over the chlorine first and then get a SWG. I've heard great reviews on salt water.

I started the Clorox method on Saturday morning. Kept testing and putting Clorox in about every hour or two to make sure the free chlorine was 15 ppm. Hosed out the filter about 4 or 5 times a day. It kept getting a lighter and lighter green. Today it just has a tint of green and I can actually see the bottom. Even though I've been vaccumming everyday, I see there is some large pieces of something at the bottom so when I get home from work, I'm going to get those out. I wish I had done this a couple weeks ago but when I saw putting jugs of bleach in there, I thought "OMG, that will burn everything up". But after listening to the pool store and wasting lots of money in what they said to use, I finally said "oh well, it can't hurt anything and in just 3 days, it has made a drastic improvement. So anyone doing this conversion, listen to TFP. They know what they are talking about and don't be afraid of the bleach. It works!!!! Thank you so much for your advice.

Ok. The water is nice and the tests are good. But the water is a little hazy. It's been considerably hot but I've kept the fc between 1-3. What can I do to get the hazy look out?

You probably need to increase the FC level but without current test results (including CYA) we can only guess.

I agree, please post a full set.

Did you follow the steps to complete the conversion?

FC is 3, ph is 7.2, alk is 120, CYA is 0, hardness is 250

So you didn't finish the conversion steps?

yes

Your conversion is complete when:
The FC holds at 15 overnight, the next step is to change the filter cartridge and replace it with a new one. The process is complete with the CC is .5 or less for two consecutive nights - this means maintaining a FC of 15 until the CC is .5 or less for 2 nights. If you did not do these things you haven't finished and that's probably why your water is hazy.

Once these steps are finished, then you can balance the other parameters like ph, ta and CYA.

Please go back and read the "how to" article and make sure you complete the process - once you do then you must maintain the proper water balance and hazy water shouldn't be an issue.

What happened to your stabilizer?