BBB = Inexpensive? I must be missing something...

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What we teach here is not intended to save you money on chemistry. It may or may not but that's not the point.

We teach you to understand how to manage your pool water chemistry. You can certainly go to a pool store and they will be happy to do that for you....you'll have to decide how much that costs. Their free testing is usually worth exactly what you pay for it. If you are happy with that method and it's working for you, you probably have nothing to gain by reading further.

Conversely, you can take pool management into your own hands by learning the chemistry and not being dependent on the part-time college kid telling you how much you need of each of the products they want you to buy.
 
Well, I have to say that folks that follow the method here already know what their pools need. They have learned what it takes to keep their pools happy.

They have learned what they need to do so that the pool does not "turn green" in the middle of the swim season and what not to do to turn the blonde hair green!
Horrors! :shock:

If their pool does develop algae, they already know why :roll: :oops: and what to do about it :goodjob: .

They are armed with knowledge and great test kits. :goodjob: and are not at the mercy of pool stores.

That is priceless :-D
 
I hope Michael or anyone else reading this or any other of the hundreds of threads here get the message that BBB works by itself period. This year I have done totally BBB. No pucks, no shock in a bag.....nothing. I have had the least amount of problems with my pool by far this year only using BBB.

How true it has been said ALL of us here have LEARNED how to adjust our pool chemistry and what happens when that chemistry changes. The funniest part of this year's pool is that I dumped the SWG because it is/was eating my heater a bit. I don't miss the thing at all. It takes me about 5 minutes to test and then dump in the probably 1 cup of Clorox I need every other day in my small pool. How hard is that?

Thank goodness I NEVER went to a pool store since owning my little pools and have never had to "unlearn" what those people try to pass on as expertise. I can tell just by reading Michael's original post he needs to unlearn what pucks are and what they do. He doesn't understand the ramifications of ONLY using pucks. I hope he does now........that understanding is critical to a nice pool. And yes, that concept even took me (not even have been in a pool store) a couple of days to sink in.

Bob E.
 
The best thing that happened to me pool-wise was getting turned on to this site by a friend of mine before we even broke ground for our pool. I cannot imaging what would have happened if I went to the pool store looking for advice.
 
while i do believe the BBB method is cheaper. currently im adding 40 oz of bleach daily, from 121 oz jugs, which is about 14 jugs a month at 2.50 a jug, about $35 a month. walmart sells the big tubs of pucks for $55, which i believe would last me a month if i used them. currently, i rarely add anything else other than bleach every day as my pH doesnt change more than + or - .2 per day from 7.7. the bottom line is: i dont care about the cost....it works and makes pool maintenance a breeze. i love how clear my pool is for only 5 minutes of my time per morning.

im a BBB'r and TFP'r for life! :party:
 
I think the biggest benefit to BBB is simplicity. You adjust one thing at a time in response to your testing. Low FC? Add Liquid CL... really simple, no secondary effects... no drawback.

I did recently use a 4 pound disposable floater of Dichlor for my 8-day long vacation. I left my CYA low (~20) before my trip, floated it for a week before my trip adjusting the number of holes to punch on the jug (ended up with all holes open to get required FC) and adding LC to keep it correct during titration. I added extra water. When I got home, the CL was a tiny bit low for my new CYA. My CYA is closer to 40 PPM. I did a quick increase of my CL to a shock level as I found I had a slight cloudiness that first day home and it was gone in one day.

BBB is simple and costs seem to me more controlled, if not less expensive, than with the buckets of tab that effect three levels at the some time and never seem to make my water as sparkly as it is now.
 
BBB is as much about understanding your chemistry as cost. People here do use alternative sources of chlorine (as Jblizzle said above) but they do so with full knowledge of what chemicals are being fed into their pool. And as Richard so well said above there are consequences of adding potentially unnecessary chemicals that are in other forms such as pucks. For example....I needed to shock my pool due to algae this year which (isn't a product) is bringing the FC up to a higher than maintenance level (depending on your CYA) and keeping it there until process is complete. I have a SWG and had never previously added chlorine but I chose cal-hypo over bleach. This wasn't because of price but for ease of handling as I live on 26 acres and it isn't like my pool is located outside my garage door. I chose cal-hypo because I knew what else it added to the water.....calcium. I knew my calcium level was <20 so this was a reasonable choice for me (probably not cheaper but I had no intention of lugging that much bleach the distance).

The comparisons have been made above. It is the unintended consequences and costs of not understanding what is going into your pool that may very well cost you much more in the end. This site is the best resource you will find if you want to educate yourself on all of that and then make the best choice for you.
 
I'm 63 and never owned a pool until we bought this house a year ago. I figured the pool guy knew what he was doing and I could afford the $140/mo., so silk was well. After 4 or 5 weeks I noticed he spent about 10 minutes a week on my pool... I figured I could that, I have a auto puck chlorinator, easy as pie. Then I found this sight and all sounded reasonable so I switched to BBB. Set up a liquid chlorinator, and now spend about 5 minutes a day and $25/mo. on the pool and no problems since.
 
My first pool was installed in Dec 2012
Before that never had a pool and had no clue how to maintain one
At the end of April my pool was a beautiful green color
I started a search on the internet and found this web site
So to get my pool from green to Sparkling Clear to about 12 days and 150 dollars or so(about half was the TF-100 test kit) which I very happy with :cheers:
Since then all I added is some baking soda every now and then to raise my TA and some muriatic acid to lower the PH
I love the info I got here and Thank God I found it before I got pool stored
 

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i also ran numbers like you and when i saw it was pricier to maintain i said i would wait till i did more research.

normally i would figure out how many weeks the pool would be open. then i would go off the labels recommendation for weekly and opening dosage and buy that amount.

so first thing i did this year was buy some clarifier, algeacide and cal-hypo. right out the gate i spent over 140$ for these.

after reading more about the BBB method i realized that no one was using these chemicals and instead using bleach for everything. i have since been using the BBB method and love it.

so if you use any of these chemicals you will also save some money in the end.
 
$140 will buy you a nice TF-100 test kits and several bottle of bleach.

I just did the math... For $140 you can get the test kit and 24 bottles of $3 Wal-Mar bleach. That's not a summer's worth but its a good start to a trouble free swimming pool.
 
techguy said:
$140 will buy you a nice TF-100 test kits and several bottle of bleach.

I just did the math... For $140 you can get the test kit and 24 bottles of $3 Wal-Mar bleach. That's not a summer's worth but its a good start to a trouble free swimming pool.
Click to expand...

luckily i already have the test kit so i was testing last year to get used to it. i didn't realize how everything worked until i started doing the BBB method myself this year. i have been slowly using whatever i had bought so i don't waste it. like shock with cal-hypo when needed. having the TF-100 i can now watch my calcium hardness to make sure levels are fine.


i have been putting the costs of everything in my simple pool app, but numbers will be skewed since i bought that initial 140 dollars of product and use those occasionally instead of bleach. hoping the truth really shines next summer.
 
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