Quote Originally Posted by tmbier
We're going to switch to Chlorine from Baquacil after reading all the facts here, and after listening to friends who have pools and use chlorine.

It is Friday night. Our water is cloudy after two weeks of treatments for algae and haze. We have a 25,000 gallon chemical soup in a vinyl pool, and tired of wasting the $$ on Baquacil. The pool store employees tell us they can clear up the haze in a minute if we would switch to Chlorine.

How soon can we expect to swim again in the pool after starting the conversion?
Depends on you and how much effort you want to put into it. Some poeple have converted in just a few days, some have taken weeks. It really depends on how close you are going to monitor the chlorine levels and maintain them during the process.
How soon should we expect the haze to clear?
Same answer as above
How many gallons of bleach should we have on hand? and does Walmart sell the Borax soda?
Walmart and most grocery stores sells bleach (you are going to need a LOT of it! How much depends on what the biguinide level in you pool is when you start the conversion), borax (20 mule team in the laundry aisle), baking soda ususally in the baking aisle
Where do we get Ben's pool testing kit for $15.00?
Ben's kit is a bit more expensive but is the best 'bang for your buck" in pool test kits. Here is the link
http://www.poolsolutions.com/cart/ps234.php
There are also good kits from Taylor and LaMotte. Taylor's K-2006 is a bit less expensive than Ben's but it contains a few tests that you wll never use and MUCH LESS reagents so you will be buying refill$ much sooner (The CYA test only has enough for about 5 tests in the Taylor kit)
Walmart usually sell a drop based test kit by HTH or AquaChem for about $15 dollars....best kit you can get for under $20 but it does have some limitations like not testing FC and there are some issues with the CH test.
Thanks for all the help. I'm finally getting answers.
Hope this is helpful