To Baquacil or not to Baquacil...that is the question.

[radialaced]

Well I just discovered this site yesterday.

I'm on my 3rd year with Bac and my water is milky and smelly...yuk!

I've been running my filter 24/7 for two months, (sometimes low speed and sometimes full speed). But I can't get rid of the milkyness or the smell.

I"m using the white sand instead of the yellow sand in my filter. I even added a cartridge filter after my sand filter. My chemicals test good. Basically THERE IS NO REASON FOR MY CRAPPY WATER!

So I'm draining it....to the bottom. I have city water with good pressure so I can fill it in less than a day.

So, what do I do now? Obviously I'm going to dump my white sand and replace it with new white sand since it is three years old. But do I restart my pool with the dreaded Bac so I can finish the season and my stockpile of Bac chemicals or convert to Chlorine now?

BTW, one more very, very important note. My daughter is having her 13th birthday party this Saturday haviing the pool clean and operational is my number one priority.

Thanks everyone
Rick

[prh129]

If you look around the forum you will see a whole lot of happy people using chlorine and very few happy people using Baquacil. I have not used Baquacil so I can't tell you if it's good or bad but you have been using Baquacil and obviously you have not been happy. I am extremely confident that if you start up with chlorine your pool will be ready to go by Saturday and you will be a happy camper from now on.

Besides, whatever savings you might get from using up your old chemicals would be lost by the additional chlorine you would have to buy to convert later on. You could always try to sell the old chemicals on ebay.

Make sure you get a drops based test kit and if you have any problems on startup, post your test numbers and someone will help you out right away.

Good luck!

Peter

[mariner09]

I moved into a my house a few months ago and found they had a bac pool. I decided to stay with it and haven't had any issues, other than cleaning the filter cartridges every couple of days to maintain good pressure.

I could see a bad spell costing a lot to fix as that's what usually happens with all the horror stories I've seen here.

[tundraSQ]

Heres my advice....take a pencil and paper and add up all the people you can find here who switched from chlorine to Baquacil....and then add up all the people who switched from baquacil to chlorine.....and which ever list is higher thats what i would go with.

Hint....i would not think you would find ANYONE switching from chlorine to Baquacil.

[pool newby]

My advice is to sell the Baquacil on ebay, somebody will scarf it up , and start the new water on BBB, or chlorine.

[dkdog68]

Hey Rick, i am by no means a master of Baq or chlorine. but one thing i have learned is with Baq, you should change you filter's sand every year. that even came straight from the pool store people too. i switched over to chlorine this year, and from day one haven't had any kind of problems. had all sorts of problems with the baq. and have saved a ton more money on chemicals.

[VOLDADDY]

I switched from Baquacil to chlorine last year and couldn't be happier. Not only am I saving a lot of $$$ but I am finally doing what the Baquacil sales pitch said I could do; spend more time enjoying my pool and less time working on it. I hate to say it, but I have only brushed my pool once this year, and did that out of guilt from not doing it. My pool is sparkling and not 1 speck of algae. If you are draining to the bottom and starting over, you should be good to go in a day or two. BTW- you didn't mention if you have a liner in your pool. If you do DON'T drain all of the water out!!! You can read how to do partial drains a couple of times and accomplish the same thing without any damage to the liner. If you don't have a liner, drain away and enjoy your easy to maintain beautiful pool! Make sure you order Ben's test kit. That, bleach, CYA, borax, baking soda, and muratic acid are about all of the chemicals you will need. Good luck!

[brent.roberts]

If you have a BIG water heater, start dumping the water tonight and you might get it warm enough for the kids on the weekend. That will be the biggest issue.

Going with chlorine from the start up will be dead easy with the help you will get here. Read up on the www.poolsolutions.com site. Also run by the host of this site Ben (aka pooldoc) The navigation there is not so easy but follow the FAQs about using Bleach Borax and Baking Soda.
see http://www.poolsolutions.com/tips/10things.html and follow the little more tips at the bottom.

Hit the Walmart of similar store, get a couple of pounds of borax and baking soda, a gallon of muriatic acid and maybe 5 to 10 gallons of plain unscented bleach 5.25 or 6% and in the pool section, about 2 to 4 pounds of stabilizer ( aka CYA, cyuranic acid, conditioner etc. That's essentially all you should need to get going and keep going for nearly a month. ( Maybe a bit more if your pool is larger than normal) You will see that the $$ savings are going to start to ring in very soon.
After the water is balance most folks here use a couple of quarts of bleach a day and a couple of cups of muriatic acid ( to control PH ) a week. The CYA basically is a one shot deal to get going and adding a bit more a couple times a year to maintain it when water gets splashed out by kids or diluted by rain.

So, what to do for the weekend. Put up with what you've got or dump it and try to get it warm enough.

When you're ready to fill. Post back here with
- your pool volume
- your pool construction concrete/plaster, vinyl liner etc.
- maybe the PH, alkalinity and Calcium hardness or your fill water

Then we can give you a recipe to get started as your fill water is going in.

Good luck

PS download this small program by one of the member here MW Smith.
It will help caluclate pool volume, and how much of all the chemicals needed to
give certain results.

Ie with a 25000 gallon pool how much muricatic acid to I add to lower my PH 0.5 PPM

http://home.earthlink.net/%7Emwsmith...achCalc262.exe
Put it on the desktop of your computer. You'll use it several times in the next week or two.

[radialaced]

If you have a BIG water heater, start dumping the water tonight and you might get it warm enough for the kids on the weekend. That will be the biggest issue.

Going with chlorine from the start up will be dead easy with the help you will get here. Read up on the www.poolsolutions.com site. Also run by the host of this site Ben (aka pooldoc) The navigation there is not so easy but follow the FAQs about using Bleach Borax and Baking Soda.
see http://www.poolsolutions.com/tips/10things.html and follow the little more tips at the bottom.

Hit the Walmart of similar store, get a couple of pounds of borax and baking soda, a gallon of muriatic acid and maybe 5 to 10 gallons of plain unscented bleach 5.25 or 6% and in the pool section, about 2 to 4 pounds of stabilizer ( aka CYA, cyuranic acid, conditioner etc. That's essentially all you should need to get going and keep going for nearly a month. ( Maybe a bit more if your pool is larger than normal) You will see that the $$ savings are going to start to ring in very soon.
After the water is balance most folks here use a couple of quarts of bleach a day and a couple of cups of muriatic acid ( to control PH ) a week. The CYA basically is a one shot deal to get going and adding a bit more a couple times a year to maintain it when water gets splashed out by kids or diluted by rain.

So, what to do for the weekend. Put up with what you've got or dump it and try to get it warm enough.

When you're ready to fill. Post back here with
- your pool volume
- your pool construction concrete/plaster, vinyl liner etc.
- maybe the PH, alkalinity and Calcium hardness or your fill water

Then we can give you a recipe to get started as your fill water is going in.

Good luck

Thanks for responding everyone.....that was darn nice of you all.

I did a no no and drained it down to an inch. I didn't observe any wrinkles or sags. Hopefully my liner is okay and it didn't shrink and it won't tear as I fill it back up. It is a decent beaded liner and I believe it is pretty thick. It's a 24' round, 52" tall above ground pool.

As soon as I drained it I started filling it back up. Right now my 52" pool has 18" of fresh, clear sweet drinking water in it :-) It's late so I won't run the water anymore tonight. I'll start it again in the morning. With my water pressure it should take about 10 more hours to bring it up to about 50".

The filter is loaded with new white sand. I have a cartridge filter after the sand filter that will take out particles down to the several micron level. The cartridge has two weeks on it. Do you think I should replace it?

Okay, I can't decide if I should do Baq, chlorine or BBB. How much time do I have to make up my mind?

I hope I didn't screw up my liner

Thanks again,
Rick

[rmeden]

probably too late now, but if it will take 10 hours, why not let it run over night?