Is Soft-Swim really that bad???

[falken]

Oh, and as far as my current cost goes, I installed a salt water chrloine generator which ran me around $600.

I now spend between $1-$5/mo on pool chemicals.

[jeffmull]

When you pool store says Baqua is a little more expensive, they are comparing it to the chlorine supplies they sell.

When you compare it to generics as recommended on this forum, the cost is MUCH higher.

Jeff - former Baqua user

[lizzie64]

I'm in the 3rd day of my conversion. We had our pool installed last year and fell hook, line and sinker for the Baqua sales pitch.

Worked great for half the summer. Then the cloudyness started. We spent hundreds of dollars last year trying to clear it up., Shock, clarifiers, floccs you name it. NOTHING.

This year - opened the pool. You guessed it CLOUDY. The pool place told me the water was perfectly balanced. So why is it cloudy??? After being told to buy over $400 more in stuff, I said forget it.

After 3 days of pumping bleach, the edges of my pool are crystal clear. It's working and I can't wait.

As for the baqua chems - ebay will probably be the cheapest you find. The sanitizer at the store is $30 a bottle , the shock was $15 a bottle.

Way too expensive for me. And I was always aggravated and apologizing for how my water looked.

[mariner09]

I just don't see why everyone is having problems.

Granted, I've only had this pool going on 2 months now and even after some torrential downpours, it's been great. Clear and not really that demanding. The only regular maintenance I need to do is power wash the filter cartridges every couple of days to maintain good pressure. That takes all of 15 minutes.

If I do get into a jam like most have in this forum, I'll probably make the switch, but as long as it stays like this, steady as she goes...

[CarlD]

That's because conversion is for people who ARE having problems. You aren't. That means you are either doing everything right or you are just lucky. One month isn't a lot, though. If you STILL are fine at the end of the season, you'll know you've managed it correctly.

SO many people complain that June and July they are fine, but in August they get algae blooms.

As for chlorine bothering you, you should take a look at the stickied threads in the Chlorine and Testing topics. Mostly, chlorine gets a bad rap when a badly maintained pool should get the blame. Contaminants, Combined Chloramines and out of whack pH are the cause of smell, and skin and eye irritation, but Free Chlorine gets the blame.

[mariner09]

My experiences with chlorine pools have all been public, but from what I've read here in the past month, it's proof positive that there's a right way and a wrong way to do it.

I'll be watching August to see how things go and crossing my fingers, but not holding my breath....

[prh129]

It might not be so much of a "wrong way" as "the best you can do" as far as a public pool goes. In a residential pool, you have a pretty regular bathing load and (hopefully) control of kids urintaing in the pool. Also you can test anytime you want and treat the water as necessary any time you want.

In a public pool, I would guess you can only treat the pool in the off hours then that has to last the whole time the pool is open regardless of how many people are in it so you end up having to overchlorinate to keep things safe.

At any rate, for that reason I wouldn't use a public pool as experience for using chlorine.

Peter

[bcb1]

Is Softswim/Baquacil really that bad? Well...yes and no. It has a lot of disadvantages, and to the best of my knowledge, only one advantage.

Disadvantages:
1. It's very expensive if you keep the water sanitized and shocked to their recommendations.

2. You'll probably need to shock the water more than the official recommendation of once per week at a gallon per time. I was going through 2 to 3 gallons per week - $35 to $40 every time I shocked the pool.

3. Baquacil gums up your filter. You'll need to change your sand every year, or at the very minimum every other year. No pool dealer will admit to this.

4. Baquacil is a reasonably effective sanitizer. It is not an oxidizer or an algaecide. Chlorine does all three, is more effective, and is much cheaper.

5. Once you start having problems -- and you will start having problems eventually -- get ready to empty the contents of your wallet at the pool dealer each week. All of the floc, filter cleaner agents, Baquashock, Algaecide....the pool dealer laughs all the way to the bank.

6. You will eventually get "pink algae", which is actually a fungus, not an algae, and it is resistant to Baquacil. Good luck once you get that.

The only advantage:

Baquacil will not fade your vinyl pool liner.


We installed our inground pool in 2004. Like a fool, I listened to the dealer without investigating on my own, and went with Baquacil. I ended up having nothing but problems, and we could rarely see the deep end - it was always cloudy. I ended up converting to chlorine just 2 months later. But just in that short time, I spend hundreds of dollars trying various Baquacil crap to get the water clear.

Since we've been using just plain old bleach to chlorinate with, our water is always 100% crystal clear, and I spend maybe $100 to $150 for chemicals for the entire season.

[gwrace1]

Oh, and as far as my current cost goes, I installed a salt water chrloine generator which ran me around $600.

I now spend between $1-$5/mo on pool chemicals.

Same here. Picked up a new SWG last year on Ebay for $425.00. I keep FC at about 2-2.5 PPM. You can't smell it yet the pool stays crystal clear. I have zero CC and water is soft. Only chemical cost is a weekly addition of muriatic acid. That's it.

[ILHoz]

I'm new to this sight. However I am not new to baquacil.

We used Baquacil at our old house w/new 24' AG 13500. Lived there for 2 yrs without problems. When we moved, Our new house also had a 24' AG 13500, we took water in to the pool store to check chemicals. The tests showed no signs of chemicals. So at that time since we had had no problems with baqua before we went with it again. year 1 fine, year 2 pink algae. $400 in Baqua chem. and a new$100 cartridge for filter. White mold came next. $400-500 in chemicals another new cartridge all of this on top of regular maintance costs
$75-100 a month (shock, sanitizer, algaeside) unable to use our pool for 2 months last year.Closed the pool for winter. Open spring year 3 water always cloudy, a lot of green algae vaccuuming every other day. White mold again, burned out pump from trying to filter out white mold last year and this year.
Bought new pump and filter.$400-500. Once you develope a problem with Baqua It is almost impossible to fix it. We are now switching to CL. We refuse to battle the Baquabeast again!

Leslie