Cant' answer your question but glad to see you back. How's the neighbor?

Their water(sump and roof drains) has diminished somewhat as they moved them to the front and side of my home and put them ON my property ;(, and i actually hired a surveyor to mark the property line so as not to have this problem, but it was ignored and trench dug and pipe placed while i was out ;(

yes, you can just take out the paks and put in 3" chlorine pucks that you can buy in bulk. I have a frog system and do that in addition to using bleach/liquid chlorine. I like to put the frog on low just to have some residual chloring going all the time and then supplement that with liquid.

john, so what setting do you keep the "pucks" at, 4 on both? or do you close the mineral pack off? My guess is both should stay open at some setting to permit flow..thanks, and when you say bleach do you use that as a shock weekly or more often, and besides cost savings why is bleach better?

I just removed both paks. My frog has a dial on the outside and I keep that around 3-4. I suppose you could keep the mineral pak and just put chlorine pucks around that but I don't think the mineral pak is really buying you anything. It's not designed to be used this way but it seems to work fine. The dial outside simply controls how much water goes through the frog. I was thinking about replacing my frog with a rainbow chlorinator which is fairly cheap. I only keep around 3 of the 3" pucks in the frog at a time.

As to why I also use bleach/liquid chlorine it's because it has no side effects like raising your CYA level which stabalized chlorine (pucks) will do over time.

We are eventually going to go the salt water cell route. We added the salt to the pool last summer to bring it up to about 3000 PPM and love the feel of the water but just haven't added a cell to generate chlorine so we do that the old fashion way.

-- john

thanks john, so as i understand it, you keep "both" dials at 3-4, and just use it as a chlorinator..Thats what i intend to do after my initial purchases run their course...How often do you add bleach? and to what amount? Thanks again for your personal insights..

Qdog

actually I don't have 2 dials, just 1 so perhaps my frog is a little different. Mine is about 2 years old. I see there is a new one that has 2 resevoirs so the mineral and chlorine paks are seperate so perhaps you have that. In that case I guess you could leave the mineral pack if you want or just shut it off and then use pucks in the chlorine resevoir and set the dial as needed for your pool. As for adding bleach in the summer time usually it's once a day or every other day. Your mileage will vary just get a good test kit to see what your needs are.

-- john