We had a chlorine pool given to us about 13 years ago. 24' above ground. First year with chlorine was horrible battle with algae and seemed like a science experiment gone bad. Our neighbor suggested Bacquacil, so I converted to that about 11 years ago. It worked fine for us and we could leave the pool unattended for a couple weeks during vacations, etc... however, it was VERY expensive. After about 3-4 years we started getting algae again. The solution offered by the pool store was always 'add this algaecide". It happened about twice a year. I got to wondering where that algaecide was going. The water started getting a weird taste. The pool would always clean up nice, and look good in the spring, but then two months into it, boom! Algae again. We were spending a tad over $200 a season on chemicals.
I started looking and found this site. Great! I drained our pool this past June, smoothed out the wrinkles in the liner, filled it with fresh water, installed a cheap Intex SWG $169.00 and dumped in $40 worth of salt. After a week I added some CYA to bring it up to proper levels. That is all I have done to it since June 21!!! :-D
I still need to balance out the calcium hardness as my SWG gets crusted up about every two weeks. Then I just soak it in vinegar overnight and off I go again. Once I take care of that, I'm pretty sure it will go much longer between vinegar soaks.
We run our sand filter 8 hours a day on a timer. The SWG runs for 3 hours a day and that keeps the chlorine at just the right level. As long as there isn't a power outage the Intex maintains its program. If not, it just shuts itself down until you resolve it. It is a cheap unit but works as advertised.
All in all I'd have to say that I waited too long to switch away from the Bacquacil. The saltwater pool is much nicer than the Bacquacil ever was.
I started looking and found this site. Great! I drained our pool this past June, smoothed out the wrinkles in the liner, filled it with fresh water, installed a cheap Intex SWG $169.00 and dumped in $40 worth of salt. After a week I added some CYA to bring it up to proper levels. That is all I have done to it since June 21!!! :-D
I still need to balance out the calcium hardness as my SWG gets crusted up about every two weeks. Then I just soak it in vinegar overnight and off I go again. Once I take care of that, I'm pretty sure it will go much longer between vinegar soaks.
We run our sand filter 8 hours a day on a timer. The SWG runs for 3 hours a day and that keeps the chlorine at just the right level. As long as there isn't a power outage the Intex maintains its program. If not, it just shuts itself down until you resolve it. It is a cheap unit but works as advertised.
All in all I'd have to say that I waited too long to switch away from the Bacquacil. The saltwater pool is much nicer than the Bacquacil ever was.
