Hello All,
I am new to the forums and have been reading some great stuff. so i had my pool closed for 3 years and decided to open it this year. The water was a swamp dark green. I should have just gone with chlorine but decide Baqua-crap so after $400-$500 later I started the chlorine change over. I adjusted my ph to 7.2 and order my taylor kit Yesterday. I have a 17100gallon pool so the calculator says to add 255oz of 12.5% to get my fc to 15ppm. I rounded to 2 gallons. When i put the chlorine in the water it starts to bubble like crazy and foams up. an hour later still no fc so i add another 2gal. I get the same result of no fc an hour later. So another 2 gal goes in. After all said and done after 24 hrs i am 20 gallons and I keep getting the same result 0 fc after an hour and a lot of white foam that I scoop up. The only thing I can think of is that before this conversion I have been listening to the pool store(yup i know now just to come here) and they told to keep adding shock so with-in the past week and a half i added almost 20 gallons of baquacil oxidizer. could this be all that foam?
the pool was a very cloudy blue when i started to convert and now it is a darker blue but getting clearer. I can actually see about 2.5' deep now. is it bad to add more chlorine than the calculator says to help speed things up?
any help would be great Thanks
Luis

Welcome to tfp, LuisA

I am not sure about the foaming , but the oxidizer if it mps (was it?) is probably already gone. Regardless, keep adding chlorine as often as possible to get back up to 15 ppm, and it will take care of the rest, including the foam.

The 15 ppm recommendation was selected to be adequate for converting, while being not too hard on pool surfaces (details here...since you have no cya right now the active chlorine level in your pool at 15 ppm FC is quite high compared to what the active level will be later when you add some cya to your pool). Going much higher is generally not recommended.

So I woke up this morning and I am starting to be able to see small shades on the pool bottom. I am guessing it will end up being some leaves when this is over. The foaming is still happening but over night it has gone down. I have been using a surface skimmer to remove it. Is this the right thing to do or should i just leave it?

Can you post a current set of test results? Without them, we are simply guessing along with you.

Sounds like you are making progress...I not think you need to worry about the foam for now, just keep that FC level up to 15 ppm to kill that baqua. If you can get the leaves out I would.

What test kit are you using?

I ordered a k-2006 test kit but that won't be in until monday.
i have a 5test teststrip. just to get me by

sorry i sent before i finished. should i head to the store tonight and pick up anything specific?

How about a medium bodied Cabernet; easy on the palate; lively and bright in the aftertaste?

Although it's too late now for the initial curdling.