Testimony - This is why you should do BBB!
My first post this year; I joined last year. I am hoping my testimony helps anyone trying to decide if the BBB Method is the better way to go and allows them to move forward with solid confidence.
I wish I was as short on words and quick witted as this testimony:
man-i-hate-this-bbb-stuff-t58290.html -
So If you don't need detailed proof like what I'm going to provide, go there for some quick inspiration! We had the exact same experience as gboulton did. But for those who need the details and wordy people like me to provide 'em, read on...
:study:
We wrestled, truly WRESTLED, with turning our pool into a BBB pool last spring and it took us two excruciatingly long months to finally get balanced water. Keep in mind that it took this long because we started with water which had been maintained according to our pool company's advice for four years straight. (It was not due to the BBB method itself.) I was determined to save $2,400+ per year on pool expenses and this method was suppose to be the way to do that. So no matter how rough things got, I plowed through with blind faith. And it did get rough. I had moments where I shook with uncertainty that we had wasted hours and hours of effort doing this. But I still kept plowing forward because of what I was reading on the forum. And I used the forum to help me through every snag or battle we came across. We struggled with an endless cycle of cloudy water, ammonia, and extremely high Alkalinity. We had every kink you could have using the K-2006 test kit including
reading the FAS-DPD test results. Our FC tests
never turned clear "suddenly" or even at all. Jason's post about using and reading the tests
extended-test-kit-directions-t25081.html literally saved us when I finally came across it after weeks of struggling. And in the end, getting rid of ammonia was just as hard and exhausting as these forums warned it would be and it
just took that long.
Once our pool was balanced, using just Bleach, Borax, and muriatic acid, maintaining our pool the rest of the summer was a breeze, only requiring a few cups of bleach here and there and only one or two small doses of borax or acid when needed.
Our first time closing a pool was last fall, 2012, and the process went so smoothly, I was giddy with confidence. We were almost 100% believers ... almost. Why almost? Because previously we only experienced a closing and its subsequent opening using our pool company. All winter long I looked out our window with a tad bit of anxiety over what was happening under the cover; with its water bags holding it down, and a few misc bricks in between, it was certainly the ugly cousin of our neighbor's automatic pool cover. I was always wondering: Did we place the water bags correctly or did we not seal out the outside elements well enough? Was it really wise to only have shock level chlorine in the water and some polyquat when we closed or would we regret not having added all the other winterizing chemicals the pool company used? Would we open to the same opaque, green water that the pool company opened with in the past 5 years? Would it take 2, 3, even 5 weeks to get clear water after opening as all the other years had? If so, that would mean two months of tedious work again. That anxiety is what kept me from being a "100%" believer.
We opened this weekend and I almost cried in amazement. Our water was sky blue and only had a tad bit of cloudiness, in spite of the fact that we did have a few windy days that blew things under our cover last fall as in previous years. After 24 hours, we could see the bottom crystal clear and vacuumed. After 48 hours, the water is perfect. I have inserted pictures below to share our amazement. Our neighbor, with the sleek $10,000 cover, opened last weekend and their's is still cloudy grey-green today. Our pool is defying all their logic and it's amusing to watch. Our ugly little winter covering was hiding a diamond in the rough all along.
Last spring, we went through more than 93 gallons of 12.5% bleach, over 7 gallons of Muratic Acid and 9 boxes of Borax to correct our water and convert to BBB numbers. We had to get rid of an enormous amount of ammonia and became a great textbook example for those who may struggle with this. We studied and learned how to reduce our 280+ Alkalinity and then patiently applied what we learned with fantastic results. We also chose to add borates to 50 ppm and achieve a CYA of 60.
This weekend it took only 4 gallons of bleach to open the pool and 1 gallon the second day to complete balancing!
Our first year as BBB pool owners, our costs were as follows:
$323.00 - to fix the water cared for according to the advice received by our pool company and get it in BBB Condition
$128.80 - total to maintain all summer long including all costs associated with closing for the season
$452.00 - GRAND TOTAL to change to BBB (Since we didn’t have to pay $500+ for the pool company to close our pool,
we were able to pay for the change.)
$1708.00 - TOTAL SAVINGS last year
Our 5 gallons of bleach this weekend cost only $12.50. Compare that to last year’s $323 spring water balancing cost, (just comparing the expenses related to converting to the BBB method, not the $440 we had to pay the pool company for its 1-hour opening tasks.) If we can use last year’s remaining expenses as a guide for this year, it means our total cost for maintaining our pool using the BBB method during our first FULL year (opening to closing) will be no more than $150.00! We have our very first year of saving over $2,400!!! And our first year of a true, “trouble free” pool.
Four years and one spring opening using our pool company’s style of maintenance cost us just over $10,050.00 (to open, close, and keep water balanced.) More than half that amount was entirely the cost of their chemicals which we really needed in order to recover from their closing/opening and to avoid various problems with our water the rest of the summer. Had we used BBB from the day we installed our pool, it would have cost us around $675 total, (four years of BBB chemicals, test kit supplies, our new backwash hoses and water bags, etc.) We would have saved over $9,300 in the past four years. Imagine all the things that money could have been used for while raising three children and going through rough times economically. Consider that we own only one car and have two, brand-new teenage drivers. The past 6 months have been difficult trying to do everything with one car. With that $9,000 savings, we could have bought and paid for either one really nice used car or two fair condition used cars and not have the added stress we have today. BBB will definitely help us have a different story after the next four years.
If this isn’t reason enough to convince you to place your skepticism aside and plow forward, I don’t think anything else will be either. Worried about extra work? You’ll have much less. Worried about extra worries? You’ll have fewer. The initial change to BBB is the only time you will have extra work and/or extra anxieties if you've been maintaining your water with pool chemicals previously. But if you’re starting BBB at the same time that you install your pool, you’ll never experience as much extra work and anxiety as you would have from doing it any other way.
My sincere thanks to Jason, Dave, Richard, and all the other great moderators and supporters on this forum that gave me their help last year, right through closing.
OUR POOL AFTER OPENING: (**Notice our neglected fence in the background that we couldn't afford to stain for the past two years? This year we can thanks to TFP!!)
[attachment=0:3rfkay9o]after opening.jpg[/attachment:3rfkay9o]
A FAMILY OF WORMS ALL CUDDLED IN THE SHALLOW END JUST BEFORE VACUUMING. THEY MUST HAVE FOUND THE WATER INVITING!
[attachment=1:3rfkay9o]close up after opening.jpg[/attachment:3rfkay9o]
