Bleach Expiration Date?

[Bjarni]

I recently purchased bleach that was 6%, but I think it was old because it wasn't taking my FC to the correct calculated level when I used it. I bought the Lowe's store brand (first time ever) and I should have known better because it was at a fantastic discounted price. It was probably at that price due to having been sitting for a while. Since I have used it all up and replaced it with my normal Target brand bleach, my use is back in the norm.

Does anyone know how to read the code they stamp around the top of a bleach bottle and whether or not its a date stamp of some kind? It would be nice to know if what you are buying is out of date. I believe the feeling is that anything close to a year is probably not going to be at full strength?

Has anyone else had any issues with Lowe's store brand- Red Max?

 

[dmanb2b]

6% bleach certainly degrades over time, not as fast as 12%. A lot depends on whether it old, how it was stored (ie.exposure to heat/sun). Also dollar store or discount no-frills brands often tend to be 3% or 5.25% rather than 6%. Did the label specifically say 6%?

 

[choitink]

Found this below regarding Clorox. Not sure about other bleach brands.

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The best way to identify the age of a bottle is to use the production code stamped on the neck of the bottle, which typically looks like this:

A8116010

5813-CA3

The top line provides the information on when it was produced, which would be A8-1-160-10 (if you added dashes). You only need the first 6 digits and you read it from left to right as follows:

Plant Number—Last digit of year made—Day of the year made

A8 1 160

The bleach in this example was made in 2011 on June 9th, the 160th day of the year.

 

[George N]

Thank you for that information choitink, and welcome to the forum

 

[duraleigh]

Great first post, choitink. Welcome to the forum.

 

[Bjarni]

Did the label specifically say 6%?

Yes its the first thing I check. It was marked as 6%, but it sure didn't act like 6%...


Thanks choitink! I figured there had to be a way to read these if you could just decipher their code.

 

[Bjarni]

Just as a followup...
Using choitink's explanation of how to read the code, I found that the bleach I used was bottled on the 68th day of 2011, so it was well over a year old and explains why it didn't raise my FC to the level it was supposed to. It's a valuable lesson learned.
Like the saying goes...