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#1566 - 06/11/08 12:54 PM
Re: why not use household bleach in place of chlorine?
[Re: Buster]
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JohnnySixString
Veteran
Registered: 05/09/08
Posts: 20
Loc: San Antonio, Texas
(67.11.187.249)
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It is up to the owner as to what he/she puts in their pool. Bleach is one of the biggest misconceptions out there. It is not meant to be used in the pool, but if you want to turn your pool into the largest Maytag in the USA, be my guest, but be kind to YOUR guests and tell them what they are swimming in. There are many chemicals in bleach that are used to whiten clothes, break up soil, ect. I wouldn't want to go swimming in that!
As for pros being idiots, I been doing this a long time and have had my share of problems just as any one else, but I do know what's good for your pool and what isn't. Bleach isn't.
Adam is right about one thing here. All owner should learn to test their own water and keep an eye on it. A good test kit, such as a Taylor kit will let you test for the most important chemicals and metals. But the pool supply can do so much more if you are having a problem with stains, cloudiness....ect. Find a good one and stick to them, all reputable pool pros will answer questions and find the quickest, easiest, and yes Adam, cheapest fix for you situation.
Good luck with your laundry!
You're right. I should use the same stuff the pool stores sell as liquid chlorine; Sodium Hypochlorite. Oh wait a minute, that's EXACTLY what household bleach is.......
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#1569 - 06/11/08 01:36 PM
Re: why not use household bleach in place of chlorine?
[Re: JohnnySixString]
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JacJoe
Veteran
Registered: 06/05/08
Posts: 17
Loc: Canada
(206.116.62.153)
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One more word on liquid chlorine (from me then those who wish to bash away at each other can continue):
Yes all is Sodium Hypochlorite - consider the strength it can vary a lot from household bleach (3-6%) to commercial product (12-15% or up to 30% if using CaCl2O2) as well as stated earlier, unless you have the lab to test the strength - the label strength is at time of bottling and does not tell you what strength it is when finally poured in the pool.
If you use enough of any oxidizer I'm sure the water in your pool will look great. Unfortunately it is not only the look that is important- bather comfort, and equipment and surface protection need to be considered.
Yes some (most other chlorine product will cost more to buy than NaOCl) the long term ease of use and safety of some of the alternatives can out weigh the difference- One example is: NaOCl raises pH making it less effective the more you use (at one time) requiring you to correct pH downward, where as other products have less impact on pH , some are even buffered to help keep the impact low and the effectiveness of the product constant.
From the label of a well known Pool Liquid chlorine product"PRECAUTIONS: KEEP OUT OF REACH OF CHILDREN.
Wear goggles or a face shield, chemical-resistant gloves, long pants, a long-sleeved shirt,
shoes and socks when handling this product."
What ever you decide to do - get on a program and a routine that works for you and stick to it- summer is too short to fight with your pool- enjoy
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#1576 - 06/11/08 07:41 PM
Re: why not use household bleach in place of chlorine?
[Re: JacJoe]
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Buster
Expert
Registered: 02/03/07
Posts: 78
Loc: Texas
(75.110.200.62)
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Enough of this, there IS more to bleach than just chlorine and you yourself said it, 3% chlorine and 97% other chemicals. Just what do you think the other stuff is? You want to use bleach then do so and good luck to you. I'm not trying to bash you or insult you, just give advice to those that have questions and problems.
Enjoy your pool and happy swimming!
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#1612 - 06/17/08 10:50 AM
Re: why not use household bleach in place of chlorine?
[Re: Buster]
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Adam
Veteran
Registered: 05/02/08
Posts: 10
(12.182.80.222)
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Wow. Didn't realize it was such a sensitive topic.
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#1635 - 06/19/08 08:40 PM
Re: why not use household bleach in place of chlor
[Re: Buster]
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chem geek
Veteran
Registered: 06/19/08
Posts: 18
(192.68.228.4)
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The inexpensive off-brand Regular bleaches have 3% or less chlorine so aren't the ones to use. Unscented Clorox Regular and most off-brand unscented Ultra bleaches are 6% Sodium Hypochlorite and say so on the bottle. Clorox Regular (or Ultra in Canada) also says "5.7% Available Chlorine" because it's specifically registered as a disinfectant and can be used in swimming pools.
6% bleach is, as was stated, 6% Sodium Hypochlorite by weight. It also contains 4.7% salt (Sodium Chloride). Most off-brand Ultra bleaches, as well as chlorinating liquid, also have around 0.25 % Lye (Sodium Hydroxide) though Clorox Regular appears to have negligible "extra" lye (it's pH is 11.4 compared to 12.5 for off-brand Ultra bleaches and chlorinating liquid). The rest, over 89%, is just water. It is essentially identical to chlorinating liquid (12.5% or 10%) except for its concentration. It is true that bleach or chlorinating liquid will increase the salt level about twice as fast as Trichlor and Dichlor (and somewhat faster than Cal-Hypo), but it would take many many years without dilution of the water before one got to the 3000 ppm level of salt pools. For every 10 ppm FC added by bleach or chlorinating liquid you will eventually end up with 16 ppm salt (8 ppm from the "extra" salt initially added and another 8 ppm from the chlorine itself that is a result from ANY source of chlorine). At 2 ppm FC per day for 7 months a year, this is 672 ppm salt per season compared to half that for Trichlor and Dichlor. Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) is a useless measurement; it's what TDS is composed of that matters.
Clorox Regular also has a very small amount of Sodium Polyacrylate (added since April, 2005) used to prevent yellowing in laundry that can occur if there is iron or manganese in the water. The key to avoiding additional chemicals in bleach is to get the plain unscented Clorox regular or off-brand Ultra bleaches. Do not get Clorox Outdoor or scented bleaches, etc.
As for bleach, or chlorinating liquid for that matter, creating a huge pH rise, that's not true as described in more detail in this post. The addition of hypochlorite sources of chlorine has the pH rise such that a 2 ppm FC addition raises the pH by 0.08 (at a TA of 100 and starting pH of 7.5), but the usage/consumption of chlorine from breakdown by sunlight or from oxidation of ammonia/urea/organics is an acidic process that brings the pH back down right to where it started (except for the "excess lye" which is negligible in Clorox Regular, a little significant in most chlorinating liquid, and most significant in most off-brand Ultra bleaches).
As for the bleach going bad quickly, it's actually chlorinating liquid that degrades more rapidly -- about 4 times as fast for 12.5% vs. 6% bleach. The chart at the bottom of this page gives the half-life (the time for losing half of the chlorine concentration) of different concentrations of product. The chlorine degrades faster roughly as the square of the concentration and roughly proportional doubling every 10F in temperature.
One can easily know if there chlorine is at proper strength by adding the amount to the pool using The Pool Calculator and if the expected result is low, then you know you've got chlorine that isn't as specified (or your estimate of your pool water volume is wrong). One can also do dilution bucket tests, but I find the pool tests to be easier since I've got to add chlorine to it anyway. It's critical to have a good test kit such as the Taylor K-2006 test kit one can get for a good online price here or the TF100 from tftestkits.com here with the latter kit having 36% more volume of reagents so is comparably priced "per test". Both of these tests have a FAS-DPD chlorine test that has a precision of 0.2 ppm or 0.5 ppm depending on sample size and can measure up to 50 ppm (unlike the DPD test that bleaches out above 10 ppm and most OTO and DPD tests that only have comparator tubes up to 5 ppm).
I have a 16,000 gallon pool and use only 12.5% chlorinating liquid, mostly because it's at a decent price from my pool store and they reuse the bottles (better than recycling). My pool's pH is very stable, perhaps rising 0.1 every couple of months. I have an electric opaque pool cover which helps a lot at keeping chlorine consumption to around 1 ppm FC per day (when used 5 days a week) and prevents outgassing of carbon dioxide from the pool that is the primary source or rising pH. My chlorine cost is $14 per month and I do not use an algaecide or clarifier or other chemicals.
Richard
Edited by chem geek (06/20/08 12:31 AM)
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#1638 - 06/20/08 01:38 PM
Re: why not use household bleach in place of chlor
[Re: chem geek]
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Eskimo Pie
Newbie
Registered: 06/20/08
Posts: 2
(199.46.245.232)
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And the expert has spoken... Who you going to beleive, the person who backs up is argument with facts and numbers and logic or the person who just has scary stories and says it's just 'other chemicals'? 90% inert ingredients does NOT mean 90% other chemicals... guess what... WATER IS AN INERT INGREDIENT! Don't listen to people trying to sell you on expensive pool-store chemicals... bleach is chlorine, simple as that... it's EXACTLY what your pool needs, with nothing that it doesn't.
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#1639 - 06/20/08 02:30 PM
Re: why not use household bleach in place of chlor
[Re: Eskimo Pie]
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Eskimo Pie
Newbie
Registered: 06/20/08
Posts: 2
(199.46.245.237)
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Oh and BTW, it's not just http://www.poolforum.com that preaches the truth, another great site which is accepting new members (unlike poolforum) is http://www.troublefreepool.com. Head over there and learn the truth. It frustrates me when people who are ignorant on a subject try SO HARD to convince other people of their position and don't seem to care when solid evidence is put in front of them. What evidence (any at all) is there of the 'dangers' of using bleach? On the other hand there is TONS of evidence (by thousands of people using bleach in their pool for years and years) to the contrary.
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#1640 - 06/20/08 03:26 PM
Re: why not use household bleach in place of chlor
[Re: Eskimo Pie]
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chem geek
Veteran
Registered: 06/19/08
Posts: 18
(192.68.228.4)
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Nothing is perfect, however. If you are irresponsible and just dump bleach, or chlorinating liquid for that matter, in one place quickly, then it can settle to the bottom as it is more dense than water until it mixes. Of course, the same could be said for Cal-Hypo and I've even seen Dichlor dumped and have some remnants undissolved on the bottom for a while. If the pool is vinyl and doesn't have a floor drain (as is common with above-ground pools), then the concentrated chlorine on the bottom isn't good and has the potential to bleach or weaken the liner (acid is far worse, however).
Of course, such problems can be easily mitigated through slow pouring in front of a return and brushing afterwards. Some pour slowly into the skimmer which I don't like as much due to the high concentration of chlorine and high pH, but the real no-no in a skimmer is acid.
Trichlor ain't great shakes either as it is highly acidic. In my own pool I started out using Trichlor and my floating feeder would often "park" itself in the same place in my pool near stainless steel bars we have. The two mounts closest to the Trichlor rusted from the acidity. I can only imagine what it would do in a vinyl pool if "parked" at one place on the side. After one and a half seasons, my CYA was at 150 ppm and I started to have unusual chlorine demand with a nascent (not yet visible though water was dull looking) algae bloom and I was using PolyQuat 60 algaecide, but only once every two weeks. That's when I went to the pool store and got no help that made any sense and decided to take things into my own hands and learn pool water chemistry -- dusted off the old books, called some professors at Berkeley where I went to school to make sure there was nothing new and earth-shattering in equilibrium chemistry, and went to work making this spreadsheet to calculate what goes on in a pool. After around a year I saw a reference to an original paper defining the chlorine/CYA relationship in terms of its equilibrium constants from 1973/1974 and put that into the spreadsheet as well. It's all just first-year chemistry (well, maybe not for the ion pairs) and first-year calculus (derivatives, Newton-Raphson, etc.), but it was very tedious.
Ben Powell gets most of the credit, however, since he was the one that started Pool Solutions and The Pool Forum and determined through experience with many pools what the appropriate FC vs. CYA levels needed to be to avoid algae growth.
I am now trying to work to change the industry to be more forthcoming about these basic chemical issues known since the 1970's (and the effects of CYA on disinfection since the 1980's) and am starting with the new proposed APSP-11 standard (I've given them comments on the draft) and have contacted APSP, NSPF, CDC and other organizations worldwide to try to get disclosed materially important information that pool owners and environmental health officials need to know to make intelligent purchase and operational decisions.
Richard
Edited by chem geek (06/20/08 03:34 PM)
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#1643 - 06/20/08 06:01 PM
Re: why not use household bleach in place of chlor
[Re: chem geek]
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reindeerboy
Expert
Registered: 06/22/07
Posts: 62
Loc: Jamestown, North Dakota
(209.243.1.205)
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I will testify to what Richard has stated, as I was scheptical as well. I now have switched to using (like Richard) 12.5% liquid chlorine as I too get a good deal from my local pool store. The guy at my local pool store has also read into what Richard has posted. He said he is exactly right and does admit that the products pushed on consumers by most pool stores are really uncecessary and are just costing us money.
I still do use a bit of the PolyQuat 60 algecide in the spring opening and upon winter closing. I do not use any more conditioners. I know now when I need to add more chlorine as Richard has stated. You just get used to knowing when the water looks a bit dull so to be sure you test it with a TF100 kit as again Richard has stated, and usually you find that your levels are too low.
I just had this happen today as yesterday my daughter had 6 friends over for a total of 8-10 people in that pool. This morning it looked a bit dull so I went and took a sample, got my number, went to the pool calculator and entered my information, and it told me how much liquid chlorine to add. In my case I needed 32 oz. Tonight I just tested it, and its back where it should be. Still a bit hazy, but that will clear up overnight now that the Chlorine level is back where it needs to be.
Thanks Richard-chemgeek- for your knowledge, time and energy into this. Facts are the difference. I know that many pool companies may not like this, but the facts cannot be denied, and I still use my local pool guy. He agreed with most everything I stated above and now helps me when I get in a pinch.
A happy medium is key. Still keep in contact with your pool store if they seem to be knowledgable and are not just pushing products on you, and especially like in my case if they have a 24 hour emergency line. I use everybody, as learning for me has been the most beneficial thing of all and now that I am on my second pool season, I can only say I have been very happy that I have spent much less this year than the previous year, and plan to spend even less next year now that I have the knowlege at hand and the friends to help me make informed and proper pool decisions.
Take care everyone & Great discussion guys.
_________________________
Chad
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