Anybody buy out bleach to store?

[DirtyRat91]

I've heard bleach loses its potency over time, how much would it dilute over the winter? I ask because there's an Ollie's locally which stocks the Austin's Pool Shock, which is 12.5% bleach. They have cases of the stuff, and I'm pretty sure I'm one of the only folks who buys it too. So as the season comes to a end, and they need to unload of this shock, at what price would it be worth it to buy 20 gallons or so to hoard over the winter? I have a cool dark spot in the basement I can store them.

I was curious about approaching the manager with an offer to buy a bunch of the shock when he decides it needs to leave the floor, but with a Julian date of May 27 on it, the shock will be at least a year old when I actually need to use it again. Anybody try this madness before?

I noticed that when I bought my initial stock when I opened the pool it was $2.99, and when I had to buy several more gallons to get me through the end of the season it was down to $2.50. Anybody know about when they drop the price? Then I could try to only buy enough of the initial stock to get me to the price drop, and buy again. Anyhow, I welcome your thoughts!

 

[Conjomen]

If it was me...if the price went down to a dollar or 1.50 I'd buy like 20 gallons you'd only be risking 20/25 bucks. I have no idea how long it lasts. I think i read a year but don't know how much potency it'll lose. You could test it (maybe 1 ounce to 10 ounces water or some easily divided #) and probably figure %. Someone good at math can probably tell you how to figure %. But I have stored bleach for cleaning and I keep it like a year. It still smells like bleach too.lol i just smelled it...I live in south Texas so we don't close the pool really. I test and dose all winter so I'd love to be able to find high potency bleach cheap...

 

[camueller]

Judging from this thread: Breakdown of bleach over time by storage temperature

Look at page 2 of that thread. At 70 degrees, 12.5% bleach should degrade to around 8.67% over 4 months. So assuming it's actually still 12.5% when you buy it, you could probably get away with buying some and storing it if they gave you a good price. Since it'll roughly be what household bleach is at, if you can get it for $2 a gallon or less it would probably be a deal.

 

[Caco]

At work the rule of thumb is that it loses 50% of strength a year
However this is at 60°F and for 5% and 10% strength
Higher percentage bleach will fall faster than lower
Lower average temperature slows the process down

Would be interesting to test it and see what it is after you have stored it

 

[Piolin]

I was thinking if pool math can be modified in a way you can add the Julian day also, to really calculate the percentage of bleach

 

[Caco]

I looked at a couple of research papers about this. It seems low storage temps are the main thing, along with purity.
This post from here has a nice chart and a good link from Chemgeek in it to further info http://www.troublefreepool.com/threads/23898-Chlorine-degradation-due-to-heat-over-time

This was one of the studies I looked at
http://143.107.206.201/restauradora/soda/sodaingl.html

Piolin, I think age alone would be misleading as temperature seems to play a big role, as does the ph and salt content. This table from Odyssey shows the difference temperature makes. Eg For 15% chlorine a drop of average temperature from 90 to 75 will triple the time it takes to drop to 7.5%

 

[Piolin]

Thank you..