Baquacil conversion with percarbonates

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Burnt-orange is good. OTO reacts to FC and CC so it's a total chlorine test (TC). Seeing it go dark orange is a good sign that you've got lots of chlorine in the pool destroying the Baquacil. Keep scooping and see what settles out overnight. You can turn the pump off when you've done your last chlorine addition (letting it recirculate for 30mins) and then go to bed. The still water should let dense solids settle for vacuuming to waste in the morning.
 
Update....day 4
FC this morning 10.5
My son tended to the pool today save I had to get back to work. He tested at 10 am, 1 pm, and 4 pm. Full on sunny day today and most of his readings were FC of 1.
I just tested at 7 pm and got an FC of 6 and a CC of 2.
To our delight we can now see the bottom of the pool (and all the spots I missed while vacuuming blind).
Question......at this point is there any benefit to putting the blue bubble solar cover on to stop some of the sunlight from destroying the chlorine?
 
No cover. While it will lessen FC loss, you need the water to be uncovered to let CCs out gas. Just keep focusing on FC maintenance and only worry about your FC loss overnight. We want you to hold to 15ppm as closely as possible and only when you lose 1ppm FC or less overnight do we move on to the next stage.

How's the filter doing? Backwash much? What's the backwash water looking like?
 
Day 6 of our conversion
This morning:
FC 11
CC 0.5

Question.... I tested this morning around 7 am. The sun rises at 6 am. Should I be testing sooner?
Everything is looking great and our CC has steadily been falling.
Have used 60-some gallons of chlorine so far.......they are starting to recognize me as "that girl" at Wal-Mart. Ha ha
 

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Poolnewbie2016 said:
Update for Monday (Day 9, I think)
Got in late last evening and tested my water:
FC 18.5
CC 0.5
Unfortunately it rained buckets overnight
This morning:
FC 9
CC 0.5
weather not looking to great all day today either.........
Click to expand...

Laura,

Those numbers are actually encouraging (especially the low CCs). You may have gotten a false low FC reading if the rain water had not fully mixed with pool water. I created a 4 foot PVC sampling tube that lets me collect water samples from midway down in my deep end. That way, I avoid any surface effects (sunlight can deplete FC in a stagnant column of water down several inches at least).

Anyway, keep adding the bleach and try for another overnight loss test. Make sure your pump is running 24/7 and if you can get the water sample before first light, that would be great.

Also, I just wanted to say that I have been consulting more expert minds than my own and the opinion seems to be that the percarbonate dosing of 5 lbs per 10,000 gallons was not sufficiently high enough given your higher than normal biguanide sanitizer levels. Normally when people are converting Baqua-pools, they are doing so after a winter and before any sanitizer is added. So they typically start off with very low levels of biguanide (< than 15 on the strips). The original percarbonate process was developed for that circumstance. So, in the end, the percarbonate likely did do something for you, we just did not hit it hard enough in the beginning. Thank you for being willing to try out that process.

Continue with bleach and the conversion should be nearing it's end. Once you can hold the FC in the water overnight (less than or equal to 1ppm loss), then you can proceed to change your filter media and and complete the conversion process.
 
Oh, that is good information, and exactly what I was hoping we would do...learn more about this process for another avenue of approach to these awful conversions. I'm appreciative of everyone's contributions to this conversion. Good stuff!
 
Day 13
I'm still loosing 5 ppm FC overnight but have expected this.
In all my reading that I have done, I followed another conversion where CDX was involved and it took 18 days to convert. As I follow, I am right about the same point where they were 2 weeks out.
Question.......I know we were contemplating if I need to change my filter media at the end of this all (it is only 1 year old and I have ground glass instead of sand). How do I know if it needs to be replaced? I will gladly do it if it needs to be done but will rejoyce if I Don't have to.
 
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My gut says you will want to, at least, take it out and rinse with bleach water REAL good. See what it looks like. Does it have a bunch of goop on it? and does it come off after your rinse it with the bleach water? Like I said this is just my gut talking with no real bases to work from.

How big are the pieces of glass? I have never seen it in real life so really would like to see a picture of it.

Kim:kim:
 

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