Baquacil Side Discussion

[anthonypool89]

To Anthonypool89: We used the (2) 6 oz Ahh-Some containers initially to help eliminate the mold and/or slime problem and as a means to build a residual for our gel. Going forward, you need to use just one 6 ounce container of the "POOL" formulation to maintain. You asked about advantages of Bacquacil over Chlorine. Well, I must tell you up-front that I am a chlorine fan over Bacquacil. That being said, there are some key reasons as to why some people prefer it. I know of pool and hot tub owners who cannot go into a chlorine vessel. They break out with skin rashes because of the halogen environment. Bacquacil is a different animal. The water definitely is softer and silkier on the skin. When the Bacquacil pool is 100% maintained the water is so very pure and the clarity is in high definition. Environmentally, Bacquacil is a friendlier product as well. Of course another big advantage of Bacquacil is that the components are less susceptible to variations caused by sunlight and varying pH. Look, if you don't mind the extra cost and you have had good success with the product, stay on it.
There are many many happy pool and hot tub owners on the product. They love it!

I do intend to continue with baquacil at least next season. I'm hoping that the Ahhsome will continue to provide good results. I really have no desire at all to go back to chlorine but also don't want to have another (at least partial) season like this one was before I started with the Ahhsome. Once again, I truly think that the farm/field issues are a big factor here - whether I'd be on chlorine or baquacil.

 

[anthonypool89]

Using chlorine in the manner you did before, you were bound to fail. Using Baquacil in the manner you are now, you are bound to fail. It has nothing to do with the product rather than manner in which you are using it. In both instances you weren't/aren't accurately dosing the amount of chemicals you are adding to the water. You're simply guessing without proper test results. The backbone of TFPC isn't liquid chlorine, it's the test results and knowledge of what you're adding. Without a proper test kit and accurate results be it from a FAS/DPD kit or the K-1725 you are simply guessing at what you are doing.

Leebo... what is your definition of "bound to fail"? With all due respect (and conceding the fact that I really should get the reagent kit if I'm going to effectively continue with bigaunide), I don't see how anyone who has managed an inground pool for 28 years with the only real issue being the variable problems with pink slime and white water mold can be considered as having 'failed'? With chlorine, I was as diligent as I could have been with proper dosing, measuring, faithful use of 'burn-out', frequent water testing (albeit at a pool store), etc. With biguanide - with the exception of not having the reagent kit these past many years (I did start with one for the first few years since - when the "softswim" system first started, it came with a good kit - but then they stopped making the reagents for it), I've always tested frequently for and adjusted pH, TA, CH, etc. I stopped using pool store advice and having them do water testing after coming here and really am glad I took matters into my own hands in that regard. I faithfully brush and vacuum. So to say I haven't been "accurately dosing the amount of chemicals" I'm adding to the water seems to be a statement based purely on supposition rather than fact. I use a permanent marker and carefully measure, to the quarter ounce in the case of a chemical like CDX, every chemical I use so I know I'm dispensing the correct amount weekly. All my chemical additions are recorded on a monthly calendar so I know exactly when I add everything. I use a Taylor reagent kit to do all my testing for pH, TA, and CH. It's also for chlorine but of course I haven't had to use any of that part of the kit.

I think you're probably referring mostly to the issue of my using test strips instead of the kit for biguanide, but it just seems like you're doing some pretty large generalizing without much to back it up. Sorry but I do take a bit of offense to the suggestion that I'm purely "guessing" at all my chemical additions.

If indeed I have been prone to the failure you speak of with regards to how I run my pool, then I suppose here is a picture of what failure looks like...(and this was from last year, long before I even heard of the "Ahhsome" pool clarifier that I've started using the past 2 months) Sorry but I guess you just 'ruffled my feathers' a bit...I know you mean well and please know how much I appreciate all input and thoughts I receive.


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[Leebo]

For starters, it has nothing to do towards yourself. The same goes for any user who’s using Pool Store or test strip for their daily testings. To me, this is a huge danger. I did this mistake using Baquacil for 15 years so I speak from experience. Before that we used strips and chlorine for about 3 years and had tons of issues. Using test strips to me just doesn’t cut it. I’m glad to read you use a drop based kit for items such as pH,TA, and CH.....you’re WAY further along than I ever was using Baquacil.

So why do I say you’re guessing? I’d say the same for any user using strips for chlorine BTW. With strips you cannot tell me accurately your Oxidizer level. You cannot tell me your Sanitizer level. It’s difficult to add XYZ of any chemical to hit ABC goal if you dont know where you started.

I must say, your Baqua Pool is the clearest of any Baqua Pool I’ve seen to date. It’s a clear sign that you know what you’re doing. Unfortunately for me the fights with pink slime or white mold is a major turn off. We too fought the mold multiple times on Baqua and cursed every time it returned. For me these fights with white mold combined with the cost simply turned Baqua into a failure. I’m very interested in hearing your feedback with the Ahhsome and wish you all the luck next year.

 

[anthonypool89]

Leebo,

Thanks for your kind words. I didn't mean to come on so strong. You are absolutely right. I must get the Taylor kit if I'm going to continue with biguanide. I KNOW the frustration you speak of when the dreaded mold and slime makes a reappearance. I felt those emotions the middle part of this season. Now if only my pool would have looked like it did in the picture when we had a family pool party back in June. Unfortunately, it was rather cloudy around that time and yet I don't recall signs of mold/slime that early in the season. It was probably building up though. Undoubtedly a lack of Oxidizer.

Now if only I could get my pool closed. I've never had so much trouble before. No matter how many times I try to blow out the lines and put the winterization plugs in the returns - inevitably bubbles start to get by the plugs once I'm done (or even while still blowing the lines). I must have tried it 20 times today and just can't get it. Even bought new plugs. My two returns are a #6 plug and then I have a double plug for the skimmer / drain that has 2 #9 plugs. Even with that plug, something seems to have changed. I'd usually have to tighten the wing nut a bit at the top of the double plug (compresses both plugs since the whole thing is just the two plugs on a long threaded shaft with brass spacers in between everything), but today it seems like the bottom plug is too tight going into the drain line without even tightening the wing nut at all. And the return line plugs (at least the one) just doesn't seem to go into the line like it used to. What could have changed with regards to the relationship between the plug and the diameter of the pipe (my returns are 1-inch PVC - not threaded though - that's why I use the plugs)? I'm going to start a thread on this in the part of the forum that deals with this sort of thing and see what responses I get. Any suggestions welcomed! I'm really frustrated at the moment since I spent most of the day on it and still don't have the lines blown and plugged.

 

[Matt_PEBKAC_Oh]

New to TFP & Baquacil User

Hello all.

Matt in Ohio here, hoping for better year. New to the forum. I too have a Baqucil pool and had a losing battle with white mold last year. My fault as we didnt hire a pool sitter, just neighbors who swam until it got green while we vacationed for 2 weeks out West last summer.

Way too many vacuum to waste, refill, sand filter cleaning, more chemicals, 65 mile round trips to pool store every couple days of a nightmare. Late in the season, purchased a Lamotte ColorQ 2062 to test my pool. Very easy system, needed the digital readout as I'm colorblind.

My pool is almost perfect on paper and almost clear. I've been in contact with Ahh-Some and plan to try their product.

We had the Baquacil AD system for years but they have decided to stop distributing that form so I am having to manually dump chemicals again.

Anthony, how is it going this season? Baquacil Side Discussion

 

[JoyfulNoise]

Re: New to TFP & Baquacil User

Hello all.

Matt in Ohio here, hoping for better year. New to the forum. I too have a Baqucil pool and had a losing battle with white mold last year. My fault as we didnt hire a pool sitter, just neighbors who swam until it got green while we vacationed for 2 weeks out West last summer.

Way too many vacuum to waste, refill, sand filter cleaning, more chemicals, 65 mile round trips to pool store every couple days of a nightmare. Late in the season, purchased a Lamotte ColorQ 2062 to test my pool. Very easy system, needed the digital readout as I'm colorblind.

My pool is almost perfect on paper and almost clear. I've been in contact with Ahh-Some and plan to try their product.

We had the Baquacil AD system for years but they have decided to stop distributing that form so I am having to manually dump chemicals again.

Anthony, how is it going this season? Baquacil Side Discussion

You would find life much easier if you switched to chlorine. Do not believe the hype that says chlorine is bad or hard to manage. I will put my sparkling smooth chlorine pool up against any other pool any day. Most people outside my family don’t believe me when I say my pool is chlorinated. They all think is some kind of magic chemical that keeps my water nice and clean.

 

[Matt_PEBKAC_Oh]

Re: New to TFP & Baquacil User

You would find life much easier if you switched to chlorine. Do not believe the hype that says chlorine is bad or hard to manage. I will put my sparkling smooth chlorine pool up against any other pool any day. Most people outside my family don’t believe me when I say my pool is chlorinated. They all think is some kind of magic chemical that keeps my water nice and clean.

If this season isn't better, I'll probably have to. Are there steps to convert username too, if the need arises?

 

[Texas Splash]

Are there steps to convert username too, if the need arises?

Matt, if you decide later to convert and subsequently need to drop the Baqua from your username, or change it to something in its entirety, just let us know. You can usually PM the Contact Us - Trouble Free Pool and they can help you with that. Nice to have you with us on the forum.

 

[Husky25]

Re: So what is a Bacquacil?

As Jason mentioned before, we used Baqua for about 15 years before trying TFPC. I’ve got a spreadsheet somewhere at Home showing costs, but here is a pull numbers out of a hat estimation of our season for a 24,000 gallon pool.

Baquacil Oxidizer: We would frequently use double what the manufacturer would suggest due to constantly fighting cloudy water. A normal month would be about 5 Gallons a month at $15 a bottle.

Baquacil Sanitizer: I don’t remember the exact number here but memory says about 2 bottles a month at about $35 a bottle.

Baquacil Algaecide: We tried about every type they sold thinking this was the magic pill. It wasn’t. A good estimate is about 1-1.5 bottles a month at anywhere from $15-$30 a bottle.

DE: Woth Chlorine our DE filter maybe needs cleaned once every other month. Using Baquacil weekly DE changes were common, even with “clear” water.

End of the year $500-$700 was very common depending on how lucky we were.

Before I converted exactly 3 years ago, I was spending close to $40 on a case of oxidizer and each half gallon of sanitizer approached $50. The cheapest thing in my arsenal were the test strips that didn't last long or work. Pool was very cloudy. $700 was the floor for the 2014 season.

 

[anthonypool89]

Re: New to TFP & Baquacil User

Hi Matt,

So far so good. The 'dismal swamp' I opened up to has cleaned up nicely - water is not real clear yet but is looking about the way it usually does 3 days into opening. Tomorrow time to add Ahhsome, then possibly some polysheen Blue, and the first dose of Aqua Finesse tablets. I would definitely recommend trying the Ahhsome. It worked pretty well for me last year. Granted that all these supplemental chemicals add up in cost real quick, but for me it seems to have been the only way to keep things going well. I still hold that location of the pool is a critical factor. Someone who is not surrounded by actively-worked farmland on 3 sides of his house, like we are, probably won't have as many issues with biofilms.

Please let me know how things go along for you this season as well!

 

[Matt_PEBKAC_Oh]

Yesterday I began doing my line cleaning technique of rotating the return valve back and forth between the skimmer and bottom drains. That does a decent job of freeing up some of the slime build-up. It did so well, it spewed some nasty out the return lines... unfortunately, my wife and some were in the pool.

I am on my second canister of AhhSome this season, going about 28 days between the 2. I will most likely do an overnight filter clean tonight to hopefully clean up the filter. This will be after scrubbing the walls down. We'll be gone for a week so I want to really 'spank' the system before we leave.

Still have a slight haze in the deep end but better than last year.

 

[anthonypool89]

Re: So what is a Bacquacil?

Perhaps the cooler temps are helping you out as well. Cooler water is less conducive to algae and mold growth. I think you’ve got a 50/50 chance of having the same struggles next season when your pool is warmer.

But, since Ahh-some seems to be helping your pool, you might as well enjoy the pool water while it’s still clear

I assume that the higher the water temp. the harder to maintain an oxidizer level? I've been adding oxidizer in huge amounts (I swear I could add a gallon a day) and it just won't stay in the suggested range. I just bought another 16 gallons - typically what I use for an entire season (but that was before getting the Taylor test kit). My water is cloudier - and has had very minimal amounts of mold compared to some other seasons. So hopefully I'm staying at a 'tipping point' with regards to that. Water temp is 91- fairly unprecedented for days at a time, but with the current heat wave it's pretty much like bath water. Almost seems pointless continuing to add excessive amounts of oxidizer if it just gets eaten up in a day or two. (?)

- - - Updated - - -

Yesterday I began doing my line cleaning technique of rotating the return valve back and forth between the skimmer and bottom drains. That does a decent job of freeing up some of the slime build-up. It did so well, it spewed some nasty out the return lines... unfortunately, my wife and some were in the pool.

I am on my second canister of AhhSome this season, going about 28 days between the 2. I will most likely do an overnight filter clean tonight to hopefully clean up the filter. This will be after scrubbing the walls down. We'll be gone for a week so I want to really 'spank' the system before we leave.

Still have a slight haze in the deep end but better than last year.

Matt....curious...are you also going through more oxidizer than usual?

 

[JoyfulNoise]

Re: So what is a Bacquacil?

I assume that the higher the water temp. the harder to maintain an oxidizer level? I've been adding oxidizer in huge amounts (I swear I could add a gallon a day) and it just won't stay in the suggested range. I just bought another 16 gallons - typically what I use for an entire season (but that was before getting the Taylor test kit). My water is cloudier - and has had very minimal amounts of mold compared to some other seasons. So hopefully I'm staying at a 'tipping point' with regards to that. Water temp is 91- fairly unprecedented for days at a time, but with the current heat wave it's pretty much like bath water. Almost seems pointless continuing to add excessive amounts of oxidizer if it just gets eaten up in a day or two. (?)

- - - Updated - - -



Matt....curious...are you also going through more oxidizer than usual?

For every 13F (~ 10C) degree increase in water temperature, you’ll roughly see a doubling of reaction rates. So if there are loss mechanisms occurring such as sanitation (reaction of oxidizer with biologicals) or oxidation of organic chemicals, then you can expect higher temperatures to drive faster reactions and higher consumption.

Maintaining oxidizer levels is a well known problem with baquacil. Peroxide is a powerful oxidizer and not easily stabilized in water. So I have no doubt that you are consuming it at a high rate. If your water is cloudy, that suggests an algae bloom (or mold in your case) and that is just going to increase your losses. When algae is present in pool water, chlorine is consumed rapidly until all the algae is dead. When insufficient amounts of chlorine are used during an algae outbreak, the pool owner is simply fighting a losing battle of killing some of the algae, but not all, and then having the algae grow back only to repeat the process over and over again. You could literally spend an entire season consuming huge amounts of chlorine while never fully eradicating the algae and getting the water clear .... sounds familiar???

The only option is complete and total annihilation of the algae through the use of overwhelming chemical force (ie, shock levels of chlorine held for a time period needed to kill everything and restore clarity to the water). That’s what the TFP SLAM process is and why it works - you eradicate everything in the water so it has no chance of growing back. You can think of it like rebooting a computer - the SLAM is the Crtl-Alt-Delete of a body of pool water. Then, after the reboot, you follow proper recommended levels and algae NEVER comes back. My pool water is on its fourth season of perfect clarity. I had mildly cloudy water 4 years ago, followed the SLAM method and have never had a problem since. Unfortunately there’s no shock method for Baquacil as far as I know so there’s no easy analogue to the TFP SLAM process. Maybe even higher levels of peroxide would work if you could hold them steady for a couple of days but it may be too cost prohibitive.

 

[anthonypool89]

Hi Matt,

Thanks for the detailed explanation. All makes sense. More than I ever knew about the SLAM process so often discussed here. Hopefully the water temp will drop a few degrees soon. This (sustained water temps in the 90s) does not happen very often. Then again, in a climate change environment, guess I'd better get used to it.

 

[Matt_PEBKAC_Oh]

It's back.

Pool was in really good shape. Wife had friends and kids over yesterday and by the time they got out, the cloudiness started. I tested, added needed dosage of to get up to proper levels. I added weekly dosage of Sanitizer, strangely only up 1 point when I tested today? I added the algicide, did not do anything overnight.

When I rinse my robot's filters, the white milky water came out.

 

[JoyfulNoise]

It's back.

Pool was in really good shape. Wife had friends and kids over yesterday and by the time they got out, the cloudiness started. I tested, added needed dosage of to get up to proper levels. I added weekly dosage of Sanitizer, strangely only up 1 point when I tested today? I added the algicide, did not do anything overnight.

When I rinse my robot's filters, the white milky water came out.

How are you testing?

 

[Matt_PEBKAC_Oh]

How are you testing?

LaMotte ColorQ 2062, tossed the guess strips. I always had to have help reading those since I am colorblind.

 

[jeffchap]

Sorry, but I have to ask -- with all this trouble, why is it you are still using baquacil?

 

[Matt_PEBKAC_Oh]

Sorry, but I have to ask -- with all this trouble, why is it you are still using baquacil?

Because we always have. Stubborn? Sure, just set in my ways. I know the product is more expensive but may have to switch if this white mold continues. I dont have to purchase any more chemicals this season as I have enough.

Also, I see same issues here from other owners and they use chlorine, they may have a cheaper route but also have issues.

 

[JoyfulNoise]

LaMotte ColorQ 2062, tossed the guess strips. I always had to have help reading those since I am colorblind.

When was the last time the system was calibrated against a known standard? Do you change the cuvettes every season with new ones? Digital testers are fine but TFP has seen problems with them giving all sorts of false readings and it’s usually because they are out of calibration.

Also, some of the biguanide reagents are known to be positively interfered with by algaecides. So if you are regularly using algaecides on top of the baquacil sanitizer, your testing could be showing a false-positive interference (higher reported level than actual). You would need to call up LaMotte and speak to someone in their technical division (ie, not customer support) to know if the reagent they use is susceptible to interference from ADBAC type algaecides (linear quaternary amine algaecides).