Baquacil to Chlorine Conversion - need reassurance!

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Thanks for the encouragement, bbodb1. It came when I really needed it. I was getting very discouraged. I have now put over 90 bottles of bleach in so far. I make an almost daily stop at the grocery store to buy bleach, alternating stores so they have time to restock!! I have now discovered a local pool store that has a liquid chlorine sale every Wednesday ($10.99 for 4 bottles of 12% chlorine). Now that the grocery store sale is ending tomorrow, I'll get my chlorine there and try to buy enough to last through the week.

The water is slowly getting clearer and the brown color is completely gone. It is now green and getting a lighter shade of green every day - yea! I have now put the Aquabot in the pool to help stir the water up, so hopefully that will speed things up as well. I have the 3-day weekend off for Memorial Day, so my goal is to make sure the FC stays at 15 at all times.

I'll do the OCLT tonight/tomorrow morning and post the results.

Here's the latest picture of the water color as of this morning. I still can't see to the bottom, but I can make out the Aquabot as it moves around, so the water is slightly clear anyway.
 
I'm making progress this weekend - yea! It's so nice to have the time to devote to the conversion process all weekend. The water is lightening up every day, and I can now see the bottom in the shallow end. The pool is still a pale green, but much lighter (see picture below).

I did the OCLT last night/this morning. Here are the results:
9:30 p.m. last night FC 16 CC 5
6:30 a.m. this morning FC 13.5 CC 4.5

Considering that my CC last week at this time was 30, I'm definitely encouraged. I'm hoping that I might be done by next weekend.


 
Thanks for all the encouragement - the pool is looking great (see picture below).

bbodb1 - I read your thread and it answered several of my questions:
1) Is it OK to put my Aquabot in the pool while doing the conversion (it's now in the pool cleaning away, and I'm sure that is helping to speed up the process)
2) Does anyone else's conversion go for long periods of time without much change in water. It reassured me I wasn't doing something wrong!

I did another OCLT last night/this morning. The results were almost the same as the night before:
9:30 p.m. last night FC 18.5 CC 3.5
6:30 a.m. this morning FC 16.5 CC 3.5

I'm excited it's not losing too much FC anymore, although I wish the CC would go down. The water has cleared up quite a bit during the day today. It's starting to change from light green to light blue, especially when I compare yesterday's picture and today's side by side (I'm glad I've taken a picture every day or it wouldn't be as noticeable - it keeps me encouraged.).

I only have to put more bleach in three times per day now - early morning, mid afternoon, and late evening. That's good - I've put almost 100 gallons of bleach in now (ouch!). I have to go back to work tomorrow, though, so it's only going to get bleach once in the morning and once in the evening. That might almost be enough, though, especially if I raise it up higher than 15 FC so that it will stay over 15 FC longer.

Here's the newest picture (showing some blue!!!).

 
I am so glad that you are seeing real progress now! Our conversion is still going on (30000 gal pool, have put in ~50-60 gal 10% chlorine now over the past week, ignored over long weekend). It was amazing what an emotional boost it was to see the water start turning from blue green to blue to now almost perfectly clear! We skimmed/removed about three 5-gallon buckets of icky yellow baqua scum during the conversion, though that seems to be basically done forming now. We are still monitoring the overnight FC and CC and are not to the CYA stage yet (just picked up a bunch from Meijer... 4 lb for $16). I wonder if the Baquacil is just so built up in your pool after 15 years that you need a boatload of chlorine to react with and remove it. Not sure how long our pool was Baqua before now, so maybe less years and now, less chlorine to convert. Either way, it's already feeling like a good move and I wish you the best as you soldier on in your conversion! And remember, you only have to go through this painful part once! That is my current mantra :)
 

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The pool water is looking wonderful today - almost no green tinge left and the CC was down to 2.5 tonight. I think I'm almost done!

The weird thing is, though, that I have had absolutely NO Baqua goo to skim/scoop out of the pool in over two weeks of conversion. I'm still rather puzzled about that, since it seems that most people had TONS of goop to skim out. That's amazing you had three 5-gallon buckets of goop, mitzelfamily! I wonder why I haven't gotten any? I'm only getting a layer of dark orange, copper-colored film/goo in the skimmer sock, the Aquabot diaper, and the cartridge filter that I can just hose off. Maybe I'm just not going to get any Baqua goo?

To answer your question, foster400, we have an aboveground pool, and I'm afraid if we had tried to drain the water and start over, the whole pool might have collapsed, and I'm SURE the 15-year-old liner would not have survived. Since this is going to be our last pool (my husband hates it and didn't want it in the first place!), that would have been the end, and I'm not ready to give up the pool yet! Also, we have a well, so we would have had to get the refill water delivered to us, which was quite costly even 15 years ago - probably more than all the bleach I've put into the pool during this conversion. Refilling that whole pool from our well would probably either kill our well pump and/or run our well dry - definitely not good! If we were on city water and had an inground pool, though, I would have considered that option.

I'll post a new picture of the pretty blue pool as soon as I can. By the time I was done testing the water, adding bleach, and cleaning the skimmer sock, filter cartridge, and Aquabot diaper, it was dark already.
 
mrsklement said:
The pool water is looking wonderful today - almost no green tinge left and the CC was down to 2.5 tonight. I think I'm almost done!

The weird thing is, though, that I have had absolutely NO Baqua goo to skim/scoop out of the pool in over two weeks of conversion. I'm still rather puzzled about that, since it seems that most people had TONS of goop to skim out. That's amazing you had three 5-gallon buckets of goop, mitzelfamily! I wonder why I haven't gotten any? I'm only getting a layer of dark orange, copper-colored film/goo in the skimmer sock, the Aquabot diaper, and the cartridge filter that I can just hose off. Maybe I'm just not going to get any Baqua goo?

To answer your question, foster400, we have an aboveground pool, and I'm afraid if we had tried to drain the water and start over, the whole pool might have collapsed, and I'm SURE the 15-year-old liner would not have survived. Since this is going to be our last pool (my husband hates it and didn't want it in the first place!), that would have been the end, and I'm not ready to give up the pool yet! Also, we have a well, so we would have had to get the refill water delivered to us, which was quite costly even 15 years ago - probably more than all the bleach I've put into the pool during this conversion. Refilling that whole pool from our well would probably either kill our well pump and/or run our well dry - definitely not good! If we were on city water and had an inground pool, though, I would have considered that option.

I'll post a new picture of the pretty blue pool as soon as I can. By the time I was done testing the water, adding bleach, and cleaning the skimmer sock, filter cartridge, and Aquabot diaper, it was dark already.
Click to expand...

Makes perfect sense. Glad its getting clearer for you!!!
 
The pool is completely blue and sparkling - woohoo! The CC is still at 2, though, so I guess that means the conversion is not quite done? I don't know if it passes the OCLT test, either, since I won't have time to do the test until Friday night/Saturday morning. I guess I'll just keep doing what I've been doing until this weekend.

In the meantime, though, is it safe to swim in the pool as long as the FC is below 15? It's going to be really hot the next two days and I work on the second floor of an unairconditioned building, so I would really like to come home and jump in the pool. I don't want to get my skin eaten off or something if it's not safe, though. :D

Here's the sparkly picture:

 
Darn - I was SO looking forward to a swim today! :( The pool looks so sparkly and inviting now.

I'm glad I asked, though - thanks for the advice, Leebo.

I'm hoping that by the end of this weekend I can start on the next step, which is adding CYA (I think). I have to wait until the pool passes the OCLT test and the CC is 0.5 or below, though, right?
 
At this point the best thing is to post a set of FC and CC test results and try an OCLT tonight as you may be ready for the next step.
 
mrsklement said:
The pool water is looking wonderful today - almost no green tinge left and the CC was down to 2.5 tonight. I think I'm almost done!

The weird thing is, though, that I have had absolutely NO Baqua goo to skim/scoop out of the pool in over two weeks of conversion. I'm still rather puzzled about that, since it seems that most people had TONS of goop to skim out. That's amazing you had three 5-gallon buckets of goop, mitzelfamily! I wonder why I haven't gotten any? I'm only getting a layer of dark orange, copper-colored film/goo in the skimmer sock, the Aquabot diaper, and the cartridge filter that I can just hose off. Maybe I'm just not going to get any Baqua goo?
Click to expand...

It's possible. I had absolutely no goop as well. I did my conversion upon opening the pool in April, so I assume that the biguanide was just gone. I chemically cleaned my filter before putting it away last season, and couldn't even find any goop in there after it was all done. My conversion was absolutely anti-climactic; One little cloud that cleared up over night and it's been crystal clear ever since.
 
I did the OCLT last night/this morning and didn't lose any FC at all - woohoo! Of course, it was a short night, because I got home really late, so it was after 9:30 when I added more bleach to get the FC above 15 and then I needed to let it circulate before I tested it again. I didn't test the water last night until 10:45 p.m. and then I had to do the morning test at 4:45 a.m. this morning because I leave for work at 5 a.m. Does the test still count (since it was only 6 hours later) or should I do it again tonight/tomorrow morning so I can test earlier this evening and later tomorrow morning and have a longer time period overnight? I think it's going to pass anyway, though, because it was almost passing the OCLT test last weekend already.

Here's the results:
10:45 p.m. last night FC 16 CC 2
4:45 a.m. this morning FC 16 CC 1.5

So can I add CYA now and then maintain FC at 15 until the CC is down to 0 or 0.5? That's the next step, right?

Then after I've added CYA, am I OK to swim? :D
Of course, our high temperature is only supposed to be 59 degrees on Sunday, so it's going to be too cold to swim anyway, darn it! :(

I'm reassured to hear that someone else has experienced a no-Baqua-goop conversion, Gearjammer, because that was making me think something was wrong. I think my pool was in the same situation yours was in when starting the conversion - I hadn't put any chemicals at all in the pool for 8 months, so there was probably not much Baquacil left. My conversion definitely did NOT go as fast as your did, though - it will have been three weeks on Sunday, and I'm not done yet. The pool is GORGEOUS, though! It looks clearer and more sparkly than it ever looked with Baquacil.
 
I have some end-of-conversion questions:

1) Should I throw away my cartridge filter and start with a new one or can I just chemically clean this one?
a) If I can chemically clean this one, what should I use to clean it? I'm sure I can't use what I used with Baquacil, since it says Baqua-something on it!

2) Should I throw away my Aquabot filter bag and start with a new one or can I wash it with bleach in the washing machine and use it again later?

3) Should I throw away my skimmer sock and start with a new one or can I also wash it with bleach and re-use it?

I have a brand new cartridge filter ready to go, but the one I used during the conversion was brand new three weeks ago at the beginning of the conversion, so I hate to throw it away already.

I have several brand new Aquabot filter bags, but I usually save the old ones to use during spring start-up every year, which is what I'd like to do with this one.
 

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