I think this is my first post on TFP. I've been reading since last year after our pool company started our new pool on Baquacil. After a summer of paying for that stuff I decided to do some research and found out it's quite a project to convert so I stuck with it through the end of the season and just started the conversion now in the spring. Thanks for all the good reading material.

Once you're thru the process, I'm sure you'll be happy with it!

Welcome to TFP!

Wonderful pictures. If you have any questions, feel free to ask. And we always love to see pictures

Quick question, I literally dumped the chlorine in, came inside downloaded the 4 pictures I took, posted it and went back out and check my FC. It was already down below 3, or at least never got anywhere near 15. So questions, how long between adding chlorine and testing for free chlorine? Next, in the beginning like this how quickly is normal for re-dosing? Thanks

Tim

OK so I shot from the hip, punched my numbers into the pool calculator and added more chlorine. Now I've got my FC up to 13.5 with my TC at 17. Guess I'll poke a little more bleach in there.

It is good to wait an hour or more between chlorine additions and the next cycle of testing and adding chlorine. Right at the very beginning you could probably go a little faster if you wanted to.

So I am 6 hours into my conversion, I have used 8.3 gallons of chlorine so far and I am already going from green to blue kind of I'll get a picture in the morning, it's probably too dark now. I'm not having any signs of the sand filter plugging, I've been backwashing it every hour or so since there were a bunch of dead bugs in the water anyways.

I added my last dose of chlorine and went and mowed the front lawn, an hour later my son and I checked the FC and it was at 15 still. I might have added a little extra chlorine last time My son wanted to make some water turn colors so for the heck of it we did a CYA test, the water never changed color at all. I am assuming that is normal? Should I adjust the other chemistries before the conversion is complete? I know the conversion instructions say to wait until the end but it is helpful to pick the CYA up? Thanks

You definitely do not want to add CYA right now. That would dramatically slow down the conversion process. The only number other than FC and CC that matters much at all during the conversion is PH, which you should only adjust when the FC level is down near zero and shouldn't change to much through the process. PH should be between 7.2 and 7.4 when FC is 2 or lower.

This morning the pool is looking great! After last checking the FC at 9:10pm I checked it this morning and it was down to 5 ppm with a CC of 2 ppm.

Wonderful progress!

You are already moving into the second phase of the conversion. At this point you will be losing more chlorine to sunlight than to the conversion. You have a choice, to either move the conversion along as quickly as possible by continuing to add chlorine every hour, or to save a lot of chlorine but take a bit longer by only adding chlorine in the evenings.

Only lost about 5 ppm of FC last night, we went from a tad over 15 down to 10 and the CC was .5. The CC number has been below 1 since yesterday. Since starting the conversion on Friday afternoon I have gone through just shy of 17 gallons of bleach.

The pool is only 61 degrees so I don't think you'll see me in there anytime soon but the conversion is going great.

That is great! Another day or two or three and you will pass the overnight FC loss test and be ready to replace the filter media and add CYA.

My pool was 66 yesterday- not bad, but not ideal for swimming- I jumped in with the kids, for a short bit; they stayed in about an hour!

My Mad Chemist at work!

Finally got to clean out my filter today, it was pretty gross but not from the Baquacil conversion, more from the cottonwood fuzzies flying around and getting through the strainers. See below

I added CYA and baking soda my numbers are as follows:

FC: 4
TC: 4
CC: 0
pH: 7.5
TA: 70
CH: 120
CYA: 40

Congratulations!

I'm glad your conversion went so well The inside of that filter is disgusting Hopefully, that was an easy cleanup project!