Thanks Waste: Your explanations are helpful. We did hit the pool store earlier today for the big sale - stuff is 30% off. We could read that the chemicals are virtually the same as the BBB.
Not virtually the same.....they ARE the same....Bleach is sodium hypochlorite, Liquid chlorine from the pool store is sodium hypochlorite...same exact thing, only somtimes pool store chlorine is more concentrated than bleach (and sometimes it's exactly the same strength!) The other forms of chlorine are Cal Hypo (often sold as Shock but ANY form of unstablized chlorine can be used as shock) which will continue to add calcium to your pool and create it's own set of problems and litium hypochlorite, which is very expensive to use and really has no advantages over liquid chlorine except that it is a powder. These are the three forms of unstabilized chlorine. Your stabilized chlorines are trichlor tabs and dichlor granules. If you add the cyanuric acid to the proper 30-50 ppm level you don't need to use stabilized chlorine. Just add bleach or liquid chlorine to maintain a 3-5ppm level of free chlorine in your water. EAch pool is different and you might have to add a bit each evening to maintain this or you might be able to go a few days between chlorine additions. This is why a good test kit is important.
Borax, the 20 mule team stuff in the green box in the laundry aisle of the grocery is sodium tetraborate. Products like Proteam Supreme, Bioguard Optimzer, Pooltime Enhance (sold as water 'enhancers" and algae control agents are ALSO sodium tetraborate, they just cost a whole lot more!
Baking soda is sodium bicarbonate. Another name for this is sodium hydrogen carbonate. At the pool store they call it things like Alkalinity First, Alkalinity increaser, Alkalinity plus, Balance, or some other fancy name and charge a LOT per pound of ordinary baking soda!
You might have seen pH increaser or pH plus or something like that at the pool store. This is sodium carbonate and is not really the first choice for raising pH. Borax is better. Sodium carbonate will raise the pH but it also raises total alkalinity a LOT. Unless your pH AND your total alkalinity are low at the same time (it does happen) you are better off raising pH with borax. Oh, I almost forgot, this is also called sal soda, soda ash, or washing soda and you can find it at the grocery store in the Laundry aise as Arm and Hammer Super Washing Soda......exact same thing but much cheaper!
To lower pH when it is too high there are two choices, either sodium bisulfate (dry acid, pH minus, pH reducer, etc.) or Muriatic Acid. In a pool muriatic acid would be the first choice. It's not as easy to use as dry acid but it's much cheaper and doesn't add sulfates to the water. For a spa or hot tub the dry acid is much easer and safer to use.
Now we come to calcium. I don't care what they call it, it's just calcium chloride AND YOU DON'T NEED IT IN A VINYL POOL UNLESS YOU ARE FILLING WITH SOFTENED WATER. In that case add enough to bring your calcium level up to about 125-150 ppm. If your local hardware store carries DowFlake road de-icer this is exactly the same thing!
Finally we come to CYA (cyanuric acid, stabilizer, conditioner). You want a level of 30-50 ppm in your water. Less and your chlorine will burn off in the sun very quickly. More and your chlorine will not be an effective sanitizer. If you need it you will have to get it at the pool store, Walmart, Lowes, Home Depot , or Ace Hardware.
The BBB method is just using the generic chemicals instead of paying high prices for things you can get much cheaper and it used sodium hypochlorite (liquid chlorine, bleach) for your chlorine source. All you have to do to use the BBB method is to use liquid chlorine and the EXACT SAME CHEMICALS YOU CAN BUY AT THE POOL STORE FOR A LOT OF MONEY but you buy them at your local grocery, Walmart, Kmart, etc as borax, baking soda and bleach! You can buy Muriatic Acid at most hardware stores.
The Nature2 is putting copper and silver in your pool and, IMHO, is a waste of money (and we sell them where I work!) YOU DON"T NEED IT! If you don't want to replumb just don't bother replacing the cartridge. (Replumb when you can and get it out of there.) Nor do you need algaecices, clarifiers, defoamers, and most of the other stuff the pool store will try to sell you. You DO need a GOOD test kit! Don't try and save money here. Get a good one like the Taylor K-2006 or equivalent. Keep watching the board for info on test kits!
WE do need to do more reading to understand just where and when to add what. We did order a test kit so that will help us understand further.
We did go ahead and get the Nature 2 while it was on sale because it is plumbed into our system and we would have to replace pipes etc. not to use it I guess. Changing the pipe and changing over the system may be for next year. Also, it sounds like we may need to do some to covert to BBB because of the Simplicity chemicals or the Nature 2.
I do see what people are saying about the cost as well, we will average out about 60 dollars monthly for the chemicals, whereas poolsolutions says you should be able to do BBB for less than 35 monthly. Now the larger cost is partially because a Nature 2 cartridge is 80 bucks on sale! Take that out and you are more like 50 monthly.
I do realize too that we have a small pool, I can see where you lucky folks with the big inground pools would be much happier with BBB prices..
Thanks again for all the suggestions. Pool opens May 4th, I'll have my water kit by then and can begin learning how to test!