Switching from Baquacil to Chlorine

[mattandtiffs]

Hey all--My husband and I were convinced to go with Baquacil last year after replacing our liner. This year we opened the pool to find water mold along with hazy water that just won't clear. After spending a little over $500 at the pool store trying different services and Baquacil products to get it clean, we've decided to go ahead and change over to chlorine. I did a bunch of research last night on the benefits of chlorine vs baquacil. This morning went into the pool store. The lady sold me non-chlorine shock to get the very high levels of Baquacil out of the pool and then my husband also dumped about 15 gallons of bleach in the pool. It is a beautiful shade of murky green right now

I have a few questions for you all. First, we didn't check the ph before starting--is this going to be a problem? Second, I've been watching the pressure and have backwashed once. We have to leave for a few hours so is it okay to put the pool on recirculate for that time? I don't want to worry about the pump pressure getting too high. Should we hold off on adding more bleach? Will it just continue to get the baquacil out of the pool for now? I believe our level of baquacil sanitizer was in the 90's. We have a testkit on it's way so we will be able to measure the chlorine levels probably on Tuesday.

Thanks so much for your help.

 

[Casey]

High FC levels will give false positive on ph levels. You can stop the addition of chlorine and let it drop below 10ppm and check FC and wait for your kit if you want. You will do better with the kit than just blindly dumping chlorine. I would suggest you stop taking pool store advice and stick with the conversion process outline in Pool School. You can also recirculate if need be while at work or away.

 

[tim5055]

I would suggest you stop taking pool store advice and stick with the conversion process outline in Pool School.

i second this. Remember, it was a pool store that sold you the Baquacil.

 

[mattandtiffs]

Hello again! Our pool is clear It's an amazing thing to see the bottom after a month of it being hazy! I have a question about about the overnight test. We tested last night and it was at 21, then this morning it was down to 12. The cc was 1.5 last night, this morning it was 2.5. There needs to be only a 1ppm change in the fc, correct? And the cc has to be less than .5 to be able to change the sand?
By the way, we have bought out all of the bleach in two Walmarts and the Home Depot in our area!

My kids are dying to swim, what are acceptable levels for them to get in?

 

[duraleigh]

Your kids can swim anytime they want but you are nowhere near the completion of the process (that's why you lost so much chlorine overnight) and you are only lengthening the time and difficulty and expense of the conversion by swimming while you are converting.

I personally would not use the pool until the conversion was complete.