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

[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?

[brent.roberts]

I was searching for a Canadian distributor for Baq after we move into this house 3 years ago and inherited the pool.

Baq type treatements are not goverment approved up here for sanitation.
During the searching for distributors, Google offered up this site. Since then I have read case after case of people with algae blooms and after they get rid of the green they have this yukie milk that seems to be next to impossible to get rid of .

Just last week a new member here admitted spending $ 1500 in a few weeks trying to get rid of the milk. For maybe $100 for chlorine ( bleach ) and I think new sand, they got clear water.

I am so happy I could not get anyone to accept my startup order for $ 500 -700 of Baq products. There are some people out there that are happy with Baq but once it goes into tilt mode, the sound of the cash register rings frequently until the light comes on and they give up.

Too bad we had the computer crash so you could read the cases. From where I'm sitting its a no brainer.

[VOLDADDY]

Why on Earth would you consider doing Baquacil again??? Are you not draining it now because of Baquacil? BBB and chlorine are 1 in the same, BBB = Bleach, Baking Soda, and Borax. I highly recommend using the BBB method and running as fast as you can from Baquacil. Good luck in whatever you decide.

[radialaced]

Why on Earth would you consider doing Baquacil again??? Are you not draining it now because of Baquacil? BBB and chlorine are 1 in the same, BBB = Bleach, Baking Soda, and Borax. I highly recommend using the BBB method and running as fast as you can from Baquacil. Good luck in whatever you decide.

Okay, I'm convinced that I'm not doing Baq. I don't want to drain my pool all the time anyway. If my liner doesn't stretch and rip this time I don't want to drain it again, period.

So everyone here says BBB or Chlorine. When you guys use the BBB method do you use any tablets in the skimmer at all?

Thanks,
Rick

[duraleigh]

When you guys use the BBB method do you use any tablets in the skimmer at all?

Yes and No. Used judiciously, Tri-chlor (tabs) can be helpful for vacations and fine tuning some water balance details.

On start up, I would encourage you to stick with bleach. Once your up and running and your water is in good shape, the tabs can be helpful occaisionaly but they should not be used year in and year out because of the excessive CYA build up they cause.

Read through this forum and notice ALL the threads having water issues because of the extended (and extensive) use of tabs.