First time pool owner with problems.....

[CarlD]

I would stick with bleach. I'm not sure what HTH "Shock" is--if it's Cal-Hypo, Di-Chlor, or Tri-Chlor. In any case you need to read our sections on Algae and you need to keep high levels of chlorine.

[HeavyHD]

Package reads its 52% Calcium hypochlorite if that helps any. Is this going to end up messing things up worse than what they are now by using this to keep a high chlorine reading?

[CarlD]

It's cal-hypo. It SHOULD be ok for a while--until your CH level reaches about 400. It just sometimes takes too long to dissolve. 52% is only OK... the 62% is better.

[Watermom]

I'm gonna move this to the baquacil section of the forum. There are a lot of posts there detailing some other people's experiences converting from baq. to chlorine that might help you. Good luck and good decision to switch to chlorine. You won't be sorry you switched!

[aylad]

I strongly suggest that you use the cal-hypo sparingly and switch to bleach to finish your conversion. The cal-hypo is sometimes slow to dissolve and creates problems with cloudy water all by itself--and it can make already cloudy (conversion process) water even worse looking. Plus, it's easier to calculate how much bleach to add to get to a target Cl level without guessing than it is with Cal-hypo.

In any event, just keep the water at 15 ppm Cl, you'll go through some weird color changes and see "goo" in the pool, but that's all normal. Keep an eye on your pump pressure, and backwash it as the pressure rises. Keep it up until the water is blue/cloudy and you're not losing any chlorine overnight, then you can change your sand out and enjoy your nice, easy-to-maintain chlorine pool!

Janet

BTW, the trichlor pucks will have their place in the scheme of things when you're trying to accumulate CYA, but the ones from WalMart contain copper, which you don't want in your water....better to find that out now than later when you have a green tint to the water caused by the copper that won't go away!