Conversion - Baquacil to Chlorine - Disaster!!!!

Hi Everyone,

I am very happy to have found this forum, albeit too late as I already tried to convert my pool from Baquacil to chlorine at the request of my wife and daughter. I used a method given to my by the pool store, but it has turned into a disaster. I really hope someone can help me out.

Here is the situation;

I have an inground 18 x 36 pool (roughly 27000 gallons) and I am running a Hayward DE Filter.

I am on day three of the process and have added 9 lbs of shock per day at the advice of the local pool store.

The problems are that I have a thick brown scum on the top of the pool (it looks like liquid cardboard). I also cannot maintain any type of pressure in the filter no matter how many times I bump.

Yesterday I drained the filter in an attempt to clean it, but regained slight pressure only momentarirly. It is running anywhere from 15-17 on the gauge.

Where do I go from here? I am totally lost at this point and just want to try and recover my pool. I don't trust the guys at the pool store as they got me into this situation.

To add futher problems, I am not familiar with the workings of a DE filter at all.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks.

John

I just realized this post has been here awhile without a response......

I can't help with the workings of the DE filter--I'm a sand filter fan myself. As to your water, how does it look now? Have you continued with your conversion? Basically, to convert from the Baq, you put enough chlorine in the water (we recommend bleach) to get to 10 ppm (15 if you don't have a vinyl pool), and keep it there by testing and adding 2-3 times daily, with the filter running and being backwashed as needed. By all accounts I've read over the past several years, the water tends to turn all kinds of weird colors, and you're not the first that has reported brown. Unless you have metals in your water, my advice is to keep pouring the bleach to it until it starts to turn blue and you can hold a chlorine residual. If you have metals in the water, then you also must use a sequestrant before raising your chlorine that high, in order to keep the metals in suspension in your water. Once the sequestrant has been added, then you can progress with the shocking. HOpefully your filter wll take care of the brown scum you already have--just keep in mind that one important part of the conversion process is changing the filter media when it's over, so if it's gotten the scum out, don't worry about it, just keep adding the chlorine.

Janet

What you are experiencing is not unusual. It's normal to get a brownish/yellowish mess when you're doing the conversion. Like the previous poster, I have a sand filter, so I just replaced my sand after the conversion. Not sure if you will need to replace the screen or any of the "innards" of your DE filter or not...?

Basically, you started by doing the right thing: shocking the pool with several pounds of cal hypo. You need to keep doing the same thing, either with cal hypo or with plain old bleach. Bring up your FC level to about 10-15ppm and try to keep it there. Baquacil eats up chlorine during the conversion, so you'll need to add it for the several days of your conversion process.

With a sand filter, you have to backwash once or twice a day during the conversion. With a DE filter, since they filter much smaller particles than a sand filter, you might have to clean your filter as much as 4-5 times a day, I'm guessing.

Don't give up! Freedom from Baquacrap is just around the corner. Just keep adding cal hypo (or bleach) and keep your FC level at 10-15 ppm for the next several days, and keep backwashing your filter.

Your pool will go from yucky brown/yellow to lighter yellow to a sort of clear mountain dew color to crystal clear. And it ~should~ only take 3-4 days unless you had super-high levels of Bacqucil when you started.

Good luck, post if you have any ??

I would check the calcium level in the water - if you are pouring in a lot of cal hypo, and your calcium is high you will get some calcium precipitating out of the water. Therefore I would use just plain laundry bleach. You must take it up to shock which will be 10 ppm without any cya in your water, which would be 4 1/2 gal of 6% bleach. You have to test often and add enough to get your level back to 10 - the more consistant you are, the faster your water will clear. You can also vacuum to waste - this will get out a bunch of the gook before it hits the filter - plus you will be adding back nice clean water. Brush the sides - skim off as much as you can of the gunk, and bleach, bleach, bleach!! Good luck, you will be very happy you did it!