I was making my usual run to Walmart last night picking up my load of bleach and the guy standing behind me in the checkout line said that he did use bleach until he found the granular chlorine at Lowe's. He said it was cheaper and more convenient than Clorox.

I have been using bleach for 2-3 years now and have been very pleased other than the inconvenience of carrying bleach jugs. I used a LOT of bleach last year....

He said it cost him around $125 for his bucket from last year and he did not use all of it.

Why would I not want to use the dry bleach????

Just how much bleach should a normal season require???? My pool is 52 in x 30 ft round vinyl AG.

Granular chlorine is most likely dichlor, which means it will rapidly increase your CYA.

The powder is going to have either calcium or cyanuric acid as a carrier. The chlorine will go away, the carrier will stay behind. You'll end up with too high Calcium which will likely lead to scaling, or too high CYA, which will make it overstabilized, causing FC to be ineffective leading to an algae bloom. Either one is going to require a drain and refill to get rid of it. Liquid bleach will leave behind salt, that's it.

So what is the norm for clorox users???? How much do you put into your pool on a daily basis???? My best friend that got me started with this site uses about a cup per day (or less).... mine is more like a quart per day... once I get it up and going. Now I know that it is going to vary according to the area, the trees involved, and amount of people using the pool. We do have a lot of trees and we are in Arkansas...... HIGH humidity.

So far I have used 19 jugs (about $28) since Saturday getting it opened up and clear. It had a lot of debris in it due to the fact that our closing did not get done as early in the fall as it should have!! Some people think cutting rice is more important than closing pools!!!! lol We are almost clear ... just a little cloudy but can see the bottom really good.... just not to the sparkling stage yet. The first year I used bleach I was amazed at how my pool SPARKLED in the sun!!!!! It had never done that with the other boat load of chemicals that I was using!!!

Just trying to figure out if I am doing it correctly. It just seems like I use a LOT of bleach. I probably spent at least $100-$150 on bleach last year.... which is still a lot less than the chemicals I use to purchase.

Anybody willing to compare their costs???

On a 30' round pool I would expect you to use one to three quarts of bleach a day, depending on how much sunlight you get, when things are running well. You will use more, obviously, when you are cleaning up from algae.

Do you have a good test kit?

Post a set of test results and how you got them.

We have a 24' pool and use about a quart a day with 50 ppm CYA. You should use a little more than that.

If your CYA is a little low you would use more, but from your statement you're using about normal.

Though the prices are older, Cost Comparison of Chlorine Sources shows that when one accounts for the pH balancing products needed for Trichlor and Dichlor that bleach and chlorinating liquid are less expensive. Cal-Hypo can sometimes be less expensive depending on local pricing, but will increase Calcium Hardness (CH) though if you have a vinyl pool with a low starting CH, then that's an option as a chlorine source.

Here are my numbers:

FC - 11
CC - 0
pH - 7.5
TA - 150
CH - 150
CYA - 30

Still shocking between 11 & 14 according to my CYA reading. Added chlorine 3 times yesterday and twice the day before. I will be able to stay on top of it again today but we are suppose to have heavy thunderstorms moving this way.

Once you're done shocking you can raise the CYA to about 50 and that'll help your FC loss a little. Your normal FC level will go up but your loss due to sunlight will go down.

Have you ran the OCLT yet?

OCLT????

I do have the test kit recommended on this site.

Overnight chlorine loss test, see here.

My pool was a swamp since i didn't shut it down last year. The Cya and leaves made tons of ammonia in my water, I have used 40 gallons ( @ $2.97 per gallon for 1.42 gallon bottles) and it isn't done shocking yet!!! I can finally see the bottom of my pool though and it's almost done shocking, I only lost 7ppm chlor last night instead of all of it!.

Yes, it is hard to look at all those jugs of bleach and it seems like you are spending so much money, but one has to be realistic about what the other choices are. So many of the people who take the commercial product route spend many hundreds of dollars and may or may not actually get the swamp cleared. Those 40 gallons of bleach at $120 is still not that expensive to fix the problems.

24' 54" wlal (13.5K Gallons) Brand new pool, zero CYA added 4 lbs of CYA but currently using n2-3 quarts per day currently