Hey, all you chemistry gurus out there! I have a large bucket with maybe 30 lbs of calcium hypochlorite shock in it. It was from my old, non-SWG pool, is now several years old, and I suspect has lost a lot of its chlorine strength. I need to add about 30 lbs of calcium to my SWG pool now to increase hardness to desired level. What I'm wondering is if I add this calcium shock, will I get a similar calcium hardness boost, like when I add calcium chloride? It would be a good use for this old stuff, if I can. Would save me from buying more calcium. Any undesirable effects you can think of for my saltwater pool? Of course, I wouldn't add it all at once, 'cause the chlorine would go off the charts and bleach out my liner! Would appreciate hearing from someone "in the know" on this.
Using old shock powder as calcium in a SWG pool
- Thread starter poolcat
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You can certainly use it to raise your CH. Regardless of how old the stuff is though, you will still get a good bump in FC when you add it to the water. It won't raise your CH as much as straight CaCl, but it will raise it and it might be a good use to get rid of that cal-hypo from your storage. Because you say that you need the CH increased, I can see no harm in adding it as long as you mix it well. You don't want it sitting undissolved on the floor of your pool.
Thanks, 257. Good point about making sure it doesn't sit on the bottom. I'll have to watch that. I remember getting a few bleached out spots in the liner of my old pool, back when I was using this stuff for shock. Actually, I think it might be more like 50 lbs of the stuff that I have on hand. It was originally a 100 lb bucket. I've just never had occasion to use it in my SWG pool.
Anyone else?
Anyone else?
257 has you covered. You might want to shut off the swg while you are using the cal hypo. What is your current calcium level and what level are you aiming for?