bdl17 said:
Leebo...tell me in your honest opinion what you would do....at this point I am 4 bottles of bleach in....I can drain tonight and start over. I will have to change my sand anyway, so I can drain the pool completely, clean all the baqua-gunk out and drain and replace the sand including wash all the lines. When the refill is done there will be no baquacil at all, start my refill and be looking at a fresh start with possible swim time this weekend verses keep going and possibly not be able to swim for another week or more......
I'll break this down into two parts....and give you the pro's and con's of each.
If it would only cost you less than $100 to drain/refill the pool.....
If your local water department will cut you a deal on your rate and you are able to refill the pool for under $100 I would seriously look into this option. You will not want to drain your pool 100% as you'll run the risk of your liner becoming wrinkled and then you'll need deal with that. You'll want to leave maybe a foot of water in the pool to hold it in place as you refill. Of coarse this will leave some Baquacil products in the pool, but the addition of fresh water will greatly cut down on the amount and speed up the process greatly. Once the water is drained it will help out by getting in the pool and scrubbing down whatever you can reach with a mixture of bleach and water. You'll then refill and start the conversion over again. You'll add enough FC to reach the 15ppm mark, and repeat as often as you can. Don't replace the sand until you lose 1FC of chlorine or less overnight. It shouldn't take long if you can hit it hard for a day or two.
This COULD end up costing more money in the long run depending on the amount of Baquacil in the water now....but with only being able to test Baqua using test strips there's really no way to tell for sure. In theory your Baqua levels should be very low before the swap, as the rain should have diluted it down.....but it becomes a Crud shoot.
If it costs $150 to drain/refill.......
Then it's a toss up what to do. One major plus I found after I went through the conversion about 2 years ago is that I learned the SLAM process forwards and backwards. The conversion is mostly just a process of Slamming the pool over and over and over....without the help of CYA to keep the chlorine in the pool. Often however the CYA wouldn't help, as the Baqua get's it first. You could end up spending more cash on bleach as you would have fresh water.......or you could spend less. Once again, there's no real way of knowing. If you do swap one major suggestion I have is to hold off until your FAS/DPD kit shows up (TF-100 I hope) as it's a PITA to guess, and almost impossible using the 6way kit you have now. This option will end up taking longer as there's no way to speed it up. If you're willing to test hourly and bring to 15FC....then the process shouldn't be that drawn out, but once again there's no way of telling.
In my honest opinion..... I would drain and refill the pool. The speed is a major reason why, as you should be able to finish and be swimming by this weekend (IF you put in a full day or two tending to the pool). Doing a swap often can take over two weeks from start to finish.....plus all the bleach you will use. We also can blindly attempt working on the conversion using your 6way kit, until the new kit arrives.