My experience is that eye irritation is caused by the following, from most irritating to least:
  1. chloramines
  2. fresh (ie, non-salty) water
  3. excessively low or high pH, especially low pH
  4. linear quats
  5. chlorine below 10 ppm in a stabilized pool
You need to start with a plain chlorinated pool. It's much easier to go from a plain chlorinated pool, to any other type, than it is to come BACK to chlorine.

Get that pool chemistry right, and then see if the eye irritation is at an acceptable level, or not.

If not, add enough salt to raise the salinity to about 3,000 ppm (about what folks on SWG's are running) and see if that helps. If it does, you can consider whether you'd be willing to go to 9,000 ppm, which is about what's in eye saline or tears.

If neither of those work, you only other real option is Baquacil. But of course, you'll be using linear quats, which will be somewhat irritating after you add a dose.

For what it's worth, my experience has been that about 90% of those with irritation problems find that they are reduced to acceptable levels, if they will learn to operate the pool properly with chlorine.

Ben
"PoolDoc"