Yey! Clear water! It has been a busy 3 days of testing, vacuuming, backflushing and brushing with lots of trips to Walmart and the local grocer to replenish our bleach supply in between. On Wednesday I added the chlorine every hour or two and just in the morning and evening on Thursday and Friday. I went from 15 ppm last evening (Fri) to 14 ppm this morning. I am going to the pool store to get my sand...seriously thinking about bucking up to have them change it for me after all the goo I removed. I am hoping the salt water generator will arrive today so I will soon have a TFP.
The postings and warnings of color changes and goo psychologically prepared me for what was in store. I will try to upload pictures with notes for viewing from pretreatment until today.
I saw the most changes on Day 1. When I opened the pool it was toothpaste-blue. We had recurrent problems with white-water mildew using Baquacil.
DAY1: I added 2.0 gallons of chlorine that I had at home and the pool turned cloudier. This was not enough. I had trouble getting Jason's pool calculator to work but the kind folks here confirmed my calculations that for a 26,000 gallon pool, each gallon of bleach adds about 2.3 ppm. I added another 4.2 gallons 2 hours later. During the first few hours of the conversion the chlorine was reduced to nearly 1 ppm.
The water turned mustard yellow where the chlorine was being introduced to the pool. Using the TF 100 test kit, I have been adding enough chlorine to keep the level at 15 ppm (aproximately 35 gallons over the last 3 days).
Upon the next addition of chlorine (1 hour later at noon) the pool turned green. At 2:30 PM I backflushed lots of yellow water out of the pool and added more bleach. The color became vasoline glass-green and an oily residue started forming on the surface.
By 4:30 PM there was a thicker residue forming on the surface of the pool with lots of particulate throughout that looked like skin flakes. I still had 5.5 ppm FC...the most all day and 9 ppm CC. I tested my alkalinity and noticed it had dropped from aprox 85 ppm to 70 so I added 4 lbs.
At 9:30 PM it looked like someone was making chicken soup in my pool. I skimmed the yellow scum off the top. In areas it was coagulating and forming what looked like chicken fat. 4 ppm FC 4 CC and 100 ppm alkalinity.
Day 2: 8AM The water was clearing a bit, looking more like Mountain Dew. I vacuumed loads of the chicken fat-like substance off the bottom. I could just barely see the bottom on the deep end (which is better than when I started the process). I was at 9 ppm FC 4 CC. I brushed and flushed and added bleach.
At 7:30 PM I felt like I was turning the corner. The water was more blue than green. 3.5 FC and 2 CC. I Vacuumed, flushed and added water and bleach.
Day 3: 8AM The pool was clearer still! There was some chicken fat goo on the bottom but much less than the previous day, and 11 ppm FC with only 3 CC. Alkalinity is high, 110 ppm. I don't know why it would go up, perhaps I mis-measured before.
10 PM The pool looks pretty clear but it is dark outside. Looking forward to see it tomorrow. 5 FC and 2 CC. Added bleach.
Day 4: The water is clear but still has a slightly green tint. I am relieved because I wasn't sure if the bleach would take care of the white water mildew. What's better is that I only lost 1 ppm FC last night: FC 14 CC 4.5. Time to clean the filter and prepare for the SWG.