Digger's Pool

EDIT by Watermom: Instead of having you tack your questions onto somebody else's thread, I moved your posts into your own thread. That will make it easier to help rather than trying to help with two pools within one thread. Welcome to the forum, by the way! Below are the posts you made in the other thread:



I am a new subscriber, please accept my apologies if I am in the wrong area, here. I have been serving, taking notes, researching posts on here, and trying to figure things out. I have had a Baq. pool for 14 years, same old story, will not get into all the money we wasted, it makes me sick. Anyhow this is where I am, right now. I bought a HTH kit at Wal-Mart for $20, but not sure if that is going to work for testing our pool. We opened it late, and just started dumping bleach in. The baq. is out of the pool, it is starting to clear in the deep end. But we basically are fuddled as to what we are doing. PH appears to be fine. I took samples in to Pool Store, who got rich on us for years, sorry, wasn't going to go there, my readings today were: TC 1.1, PH- 7.6, Alkalinity- 96, Calcium: 188, FC- 0. They had me put in 4 lbs. of Alkalinity ( Balance Pak 100), which ingredients are: 100% Sodium hydrogen carbonate. I came home and put in the 4 lbs of that @ $10!!! Than I put 4 more bottles of 6% bleach. I left the store scared to death as to what I was doing, questioning myself all the way home?? I only spent the $10, feeling guilty, and like a bad Momma to my pool! LOL They made to feel like I was going to kill my pool! If you could of only seen their looks on their faces, like I was a lunatic. I am scared because our liner is 14 years old and has held up well, we don't have the money right now to replace. So as our 9 grandchildren are staring at "Nana's" pool and waiting patiently to swim, please tell me I am on the right path, because I am not turning back at this point. HELP!!!! Am I on the right path? What test kit will give me results that a normal person can read? Is the Wal-Mart one okay? What do I do next with no FC readings. I am wondering if my TC is suppose to be up to 15 to get a FC reading? THANK YOU from the bottom of my heart. Please help me! I have my son-in-law coming to work on it again tonight, with scrubbing and vacumming again. When do we change the sand?

OMGosh I am so excited to have help!! Not excited to dump water, I just read through real quick I was so excited. I can't wait to let my son-in-law read the results. I did get Borax today. THANK YOU SO MUCH!! we have a vinyl liner, 20foot by 40 ft. pool, 25,000 gallon, sorry,thought about all of that after I posted. Will read post in full now. THANKS!!!

Carl, how do I test the water though without going to pool store, will Wal-Mart test kit that tests 6 ways work?

Hi Digger,
You are going to be so glad that you switched off of Baquacil. Is your pool still cloudy and green. (I assume it turned all sorts of pretty shades of green as you converted from baq. to chlorine!)

Now, you just need to keep hitting it with bleach until you can get the pool to hold a chlorine reading overnight and the pool clears. You don't want to change the sand until that happens.

Go and read a lot of the posts about other people's conversion stories in the baq forum and then come back here to ask whatever questions you still have. You are really going to need a good test kit. We recommend the Taylor K-2006. A good price for it can be found at the following link. The Walmart kit you mentioned will be a temporary help but without a good kit, it will be harder for you to manage your pool and we don't want you going back to the pool store. They have enough of your money already. You'll get better advice here.

By the way -- I hope you saw my note in your top post telling you why I moved your posts into a new thread.

http://www.amatoind.com/taylor-k2006-test-p-555.html

If you have an OTO test kit for chlorine, preferably one that goes to 5ppm, you'll need a jug of steam distilled water (at any supermarket or discount drug chain) and a shot glass. You don't REALLY need a shot glass, but it wouldn't be the Patented CarlD Shot Glass Method without it! :p

Do a search on the Shot Glass Method.

Carl

Okay, so all of my posts are under Diggers Pool, right? At first I was reading about dumping the water, etc. I guess that was because I was in the middle of anothers post, sorry, I need to learn how to post! there is so much to learn, and I have a pool staring at me, smile. How does things look so far from the facts I gave you all? It is 25,000 gal. and a vinyl pool. I am so scared of hurting the liner. Also how do we know when it is safe to swim? Well, I am going for more bleach and distilled water. I ordered my Taylor test kit, and dd read some of the posts how to make do until than. So once I get this clear, and have the levels right, everything is dandy, right? Thanks again so much for putting the control into my hands, I always hated giving the control to people who were lining their pocketbooks with my money, darn-it! Thank you so MUCH!!

Post new numbers tomorrow and also tell us how the water looks. We'll help you get this all figured out and get those grandkids swimming!

when you use this shot glass method, I am assuming I should be seeing some yellow coloring, or my cholrine levels are not near high enough, is this correct. I did the first test that you multiply by 2 and didn't even get a reading or any yellow coloring, it was basically clear. Should I just start dumping more bleach in? HELP!! I am seeing clearing of water though, gradually. Just not comfortable with the testing?

If you got no yellow at all when you did the dilution method (the shot glass method), then you should try the test again, but this time just fill the test vial with pool water and test normally without multiplying anything. See if that gets you a reading. It may be that your cl level is 5 or under and that is why the shot glass method didn't work for you. You only use the dilution when your cl level is over 5.

Yes, I'm sure you need more bleach, but retest first. You want to try and keep the cl level up to around 10 without letting it drop. The more times you test each day and add enough bleach to get back to 10, the faster this will go for you. In your pool, each gallon of 6% bleach will raise the cl level by about 2.5ppm. (Remember, most bleach is sold in 3-qt. bottles not gallons. A gallon is 128 oz.) When you take the cl up to 10, that is when you will need the dilution (shot glass) method.

What test kit are you using?

By the way --- I moved this latest post of yours into this thread. Remember, keep all your posts about this problem in this thread instead of putting them in other threads. It makes it easier for us to help if everything is in one place. Whenever you want to post, just click "post reply" below the last post in the thread and that will put your new post under it.

Hi, thanks for the help. I am not getting any readings to amount to anything, but there appears to be some clearing. I am ready to go and dump about 10 gallons in, will that be okay, or too much at one time. Going by what is being said, I really need to get it up there to 15 and hold. So how much do I dump in at a time. We have been doing 4-5 gallons up until now. It is getting there, but not in a timely fashion. I can be patient, if that is the way to do it. Thanks, Kathy