Pool Chemicals...varying Qualities.

[AllanB]

1. My mate Gary just came round and complained about the chlorine he just put in his spa, it made his water go brown. The previous two bags in the bucket were fine, but now he has to change the water.

2. Prior to this I had used some shock which had made my ph go through the roof, still trying to correct it.

3. When I first built my pool I put some granular chlorine in and it took a week to dissolve, so I removed it and headed down the puck route. Then recently I was helping a friend out with his pool, he was using the same stuff and it was gone in a few hours. So he gave me some to try with the same result, it dissolved quite quickly.

In all 3 cases these are proper brands purchased from local pool suppliers, so I worry what I am buying now.

Anyone else had such experiences?

[Gerald14]

I have gone off Chlorine this is the stone age. Nowadays you should use something like a Ag+Cu system almost no chemicals no chlorine and sparkling water

[AllanB]

I have gone off Chlorine this is the stone age. Nowadays you should use something like a Ag+Cu system almost no chemicals no chlorine and sparkling water

Never heard of it, please explain.

[Ellis72]

Buddy in accord with me, you need pool to cover not just for saving chemicals but with this you can stop or slows down evaporating pool water. Evaporating can happen every day if the pool is not covered. It can also reduce heat loss. For a swimming pool that relies on the sun for heat, covering it at night can still make it warm enough to swim in the next day, instead of losing all the heat overnight when the temperatures go down.So,what do you say about it Am I right dude???????????:)

[tollgate]

I normally only use liquid chlorine, occasionally pucks. Never had a problem with the pucks, but I have had a couple of batches of liquid chlorine which were probably only half strength (5% should have been 10%).

[SantiSuk]

I must have been lucky. Ran my pool on fairly basic Japanese powder chlorine (5,300 baht for a 50 kg tub from DO Home Watsadu in Ubon) for 2 years. The powder dissolved almost instantly, but lumps developed in the tub over time and they took 24 hours to disappear (I tended to dose the deep end, so kids could still swim after all but the largest lumps had gone overnight).

I probably tolerated a wider chlorine range than I should though, to match my testing regimen which probably averaged every 4 days. Levels would start about 1.2 after dosing and work down to 0.4 by the time I re-dosed. Now I am using salt chlorination I find my levels are pretty constant around 1.2 and the pool seems to benefit from that - no more occasional getting out the brush to the walls to fend off any slight greening (it was very slight mind) at one end.

Basic watsadu muraiatic acid (hydrochloric) seems to be fairly predictable in dosing effect for me. The most unpredictable is sodium bicarbonate. Sometimes a couple of kilos will kick up the TA from 80 to 100 and sometimes it takes 5 kilos - I'm buggered if I know why! It's not because I'm using HCl at the same time btw.

Other variables: readings can be different depending where in the pool taken from (with no apparent trend logic) and using my digital reader and press out tablets I occasionally get an off the wall reading which prompts me to do another that makes more sense. I find it best not to get too het up about these inconsistencies and just go with intuition sometimes! Pools seem to be fairly forgiving most of the time

Edit: going brown would kick me out of my complacency mind!