I was successful in clearing out a green baquacil pool for less than $60 in chemicals. Video link in my post below.
I have experience with Salt, plain Chlorine and Baquacil. I like them all, and let me give you a quick tour.
Sticking with Baquacil? Read this:
First, if you experience white mold, just drop in 1 capful of Baquacil Flock into your filter. This allows the sand filter to get rid of very fine particles, including white mold.
Second, if you neglect your pool for an entire month, and you get worst case full green algae, I have a video of how I got it back to 100% clear blue.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUqvK0ZWZVI
Pros: I like how "silky" the baquacil feels, and I like how the chemical "sticks around" even in bright sunlight. That allows me less hands-on maintenance time.
Cons: It seems to be more expensive. Like $60 / month in chemicals. Some kids don't like the "soapy" taste of the water.
Thinking of salt water pool?
First, a salt pool is essentially a chlorine pool. So many people don't realize this.
Second, the salt chlorine generators simply provide a constant stream of chlorine gas, which allows it to "keep up" with less worries and maintenance of chemical levels.
Pros: it keeps up with chlorine production. My family thought they were swimming in less chlorine (but honestly I think the levels were the same). The salt level feels good on your skin. You can use shock to catch back up, etc.
Cons: If you have a metal Intex pool frame, the salt can corrode your frame very quickly. It happened to me when I measured the salt wrong, kept adding more, and my frame quickly collapsed! Another con, the salt water generators do add a cost, and have to be cleaned out now and then. I got a little tired of the consumer grade ones from Intex, and the "Pro" ones are extremely expensive.
How about normal Chlorine?
First, everybody that thinks they are allergic to chlorine probably means the bad combined chlorine / used up type. Maintaining the right levels doesn't cause eyes to burn, etc.
Second, the number of products off the shelf are so easy to get and use. And if you follow some of the other threads where you add Borax at 35 ppm then I had the most sparkly water EVER.
Pros: cheap, easy to use and easy to recover from when you didn't keep up with it. cheap once again. so nice!
Most any "pool guy" can take care of this type of pool too. No specialists needed.
Cons: My wife thinking that it's bad for the kids (I don't agree). I find Chlorine to escape a bit quickly, even with CYA (cyuranic acid), or sometimes it's odd to deal with CYA building up too much. No big deal, I just found myself tinkering with the chemistry more often with the Chlorine approach when doing a small above ground pool.
In ALL of these systems, you still need to pay attention to pH and Alkalinity levels. ALL of these require you to vacuum or filter in some way. There is no such thing as a maintenance free pool.
Hope this helps. All these systems are doable - don't be afraid and take control of your water.
We bought our house w/ the AG pool earlier this year. Its 4 years old and had been a chlorine pool. I decided to convert it to a Baquacil system. I had pretty good results with the softswim and our Intex pool for 2 years. After many $$$, I had my pool clear after about 2 months of dealing with it. About 2 weeks ago, it really needed to be cleaned because there was a white dust like substance on the walls and bottom. I had never actually vacuumed it out because I had a real hard time getting that to work. So, I figured it was just dirty. I finally got the vacuum to work, but when I vacuumed to filter, all the white stuff came shooting back into the pool. So, I immediately set it to vacuum to waste. Well that and backflushing it took about 6 inches of water out of the pool. After refilling w/ city water and adding more oxidizer and sanitizer, I thought I was good. However, a couple days later, it was green and has been green ever since. I've been pounding it with oxidizer & sanitizer to get it clear again w/ no success. I went to the pool store today to get the water tested. According to the results, the Oxidizer level is higher than the max & the Biguanide level is higher than the max. So I guess there's enough of that stuff in it, but why is it still green? ph is high at 8.3, alkalinity is high at 242. The pool store had me add a whole bottle of poolife Defend+ & 2 capsfuls of pool perfect+ Phosfree. Just added it tonight. He also said it is ok to put a smart stix in my skimmer. Now as far as I heard, I should not be adding any chlorine to the pool. Can anyone confirm this is ok to do?
After reading all the posts here and messing w/ this pool for 2+ months now along w/ the expense, I'm ready to switch. I'm pretty sure my sand filter needs to be changed anyway as it over 4 years old. Just don't know if I should do it now or wait until spring when I open up. The Oxidizer & Sanitizer levels are very high, so do I have to wait until all that runs out?