New owner--dealing with bromine

[Tom RI]

I recently bought a house with a 20,000 gal in-ground pool. It's time to open it for the season, and I have never done that before. A local pool service company took off the cover, vacuumed part of the bottom (pretty gross), threw in 4 bags of chlorine-based shock and left. Two days later I took a sample to their store. My pool was already in their computer because they worked with the previous owner. They told me that owner used bromine. I confirmed that with the owner. I asked the store if I could just switch to chlorine, they said yes, and sold me a bunch of bicarb, calcium chloride, chlorine tabs and shock.

Then I did some reading on this site, and switching from bromine to chlorine looks challenging--especially because this is a summer home and I'm only there on weekends. So I can't make adjustments several times each day.

I've ordered a TF-100 kit (not here yet), bought 8 gallons of bleach and I'm ready to do something--just not sure what... I'd appreciate some advice.

Should I just go with bromine?
Will my TF-100 measure bromine--just so I can be sure that there really is bromine in the pool?
The water is greenish/cloudy now. If shocking with the bleach would be the first step anyway, should I just go ahead and do that?

Confused in Rhode Island.

 

[jblizzle]

I do not know much about this. I did find this thread if it helps:
chlorine-added-to-bromine-pool-becomes-bromine-t23012.html#p189418

I do see that the Bromine can not be stabilized to protect it from the sun , so you will have to add more bromine to keep the levels up than you would with chlorine, thus costing more money.

Seems like you have to figure out how to determine if Bromide is still in the pool, but not sure what to do after that.

Hopefully this bump with get the folks smarter than I to chime in.

 

[Tom RI]

Thank you Jason. I got my test kit in the mail last night. Here are some numbers:

6/7 at 8PM TC=0, pH= <6.8, TA=150, CYA=0
So I added 5.7 gallons of 6% bleach (based on the "pool calculator"). I didn't have anything to adjust the pH with.

This morning (6/8) at 6 AM: FC= 6.5 and CC= 0.5 (FAS/DPD) and pH 6.8.
The water is maybe a little clearer than last night but still pale green and slightly cloudy (can just see the bottom at about 6 ft of depth).

My plan is to adjust the pH today and keep a watch on what happens to the chlorine level.

But do these numbers tell me anything about the bromine question? Does the fact that the original TC level was 0 mean there was no Cl or Br in the pool so I can just forget about the Br worry?

Thanks for your suggestions.

 

[JasonLion]

Stick with chlorine. If there is bromine, the chlorine will reactivate the bromine. And if there isn't bromine, the chlorine will work on it's own.

First priority is to bring the PH up to at least 7.2. Then work on getting a little CYA into the pool say up to 30 to start with.

Testing for the presence of bromine is a little involved, and doesn't seem crucial at this point.