Nature2 Mineral Sanitizer

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T

TheDerf74

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May 16, 2013
33
Huntsville, AL
Hello all, I am new to the forums. So far it seems to be a great wealth of knowledge. Thank you to whomever is responsible for providing this site.

I moved into a home almost 3 years ago that has a housing that contained a Nature2 mineral sanitizer inside of the housing. I removed it and have been using it for the 3 years without knowing what this item was used for.

Can someone please give me both positives and negatives to this product? I am about to install a Rainbow 320 so I won't have to put the pucks in the skimmer baskets anymore. This past season we finally closed the pool properly and were shocked to see the bottom of the pool when the cover was removed to open it. Yay. That saved us lots of money opening the pool this year, so I thought I might splurge and get a new Nature2 canister with the cost savings. I have only heard negatives about the Nature2. If it is a negative, why would the previous owner be using it. Did his installer just dupe him into purchasing it?

Pool stats:
20x40 approx 35k gallons.
Just chlorine no salt.
Sand filter
soon to have a Rainbow 320.

Thanks again for this awesome site. It has been awesome for the three days I have been reading non-stop.
 
Welcome to TFP!

Nature2 adds metals to the water, which help prevent the growth of algae. However, effective levels of metals are also prone to causing unsightly stains, and chlorine alone takes care of algae just fine with minimal effort. We strongly recommend against any system that adds metals to the water.

Nature2 is usually installed for free by the builder, who often gets paid by the Nature2 people to install it in the hope that the new pool owner will spend lots of money on replacement cartridges.
 
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If that's not enough, be aware that the cartridges can fail and release all their little copper and silver pellets into the return stream. In my case, they did it while I was travelling and the little balls rolled all the way to the main drain and got sucked back into the pump trap. The resulting staining on my brand new white plaster pool was horrible.

I took a mayo jar of the little balls down to the PB's office and he took one look and said, "Ahh, your Nature2 exploded." I wasn't the first, obviously. I ripped out the darn thing.
 
I know you didn't ask, but if you plan to chlorinate your pool solely with pucks, you could run into trouble.

Pucks have CYA in them that never goes away and continues to build in your pool making your chlorine almost ineffective in time...like 1 season. Read about CYA in Pool School.
 
I'm in the process of converting my systems from a Nature 2 puck feeder to the BBB method, with an automatic liquid chlorine feeder. But, does anyone make 3 inch tabs of compressed Calcium Hypochlorite that could be used in the Nature 2? I realize that Cal Hypo does not add stabilizer to the pool, so Cyanuric Acid will be needed from time to time. Has anyone ever simply used a water softener to remove excess calcium from a swimming pool? I have one for my well water (its hard) and it regenerates, using a few pounds of salt, every 1000 gallons. It would only take a few regeneration cycles to remove the calcium from a lot of water. Any thoughts?
 
@JasonLion Thanks for the info and the welcoming.

@Richard Thanks for the link. Good read. I did do the search function. I just kept seeing only the negatives. I was interested in why so many people had these installed if there were only negatives. There had to be a positive somewhere.

@Durk Ouch. Did the stains ever come out? I am going to rip mine out as well. I will be putting the 320 in its place since the Nature2 is the last thing in pool lines.

@duraleigh I will not be using just pucks to chlorinate. I will continue to use them for stabilizer as I have been for the last 3 years. I will just not be putting the pucks in the skimmer baskets where they can only do harm over time. I use powered chlorine for the FC.

@Blackbear I hope someone else can answer your questions. That subject is currently over my head. :)

Thanks all for the quick responses.
 
Blackbear,

Don't hijack this thread but yours is an interesting post and will get good responses if you will

1. Copy your post

2. Delete your post

3. Place the copied post in one of your other threads.
 
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Thanks Dave. Still new to the etiquette of these sites. So far it' been a real learning experience. I'll start a new thread soon. I'm planning some changes to my pool set up with an automatic chlorine feeder and some repurposed glazed water heating panels... to get benefit in cold clear weather.

Seems like a good idea from TheDerf to use pucks in the Nature 2 for stabilizer.
 

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I guess I am looking for ease of use to the pool. I coach two rec soccer teams and a club (travel) soccer team. We, the family, are traveling quite often. I am looking for a good balance of ease of use and cost. So before I install my 320 for pucks, I have been reading about the Liquidator. People seems to love it. For a situation like mine, could I use the 320 for easy stabilizer insertion and the Liquidator for easy FC insertion? Am I being silly? Or is this a decent option? BTW, I am not super schooled on pools yet. I have been winging it for the last two years. :)
 
TheDerf74 said:
I guess I am looking for ease of use to the pool. I coach two rec soccer teams and a club (travel) soccer team. We, the family, are traveling quite often. I am looking for a good balance of ease of use and cost. So before I install my 320 for pucks, I have been reading about the Liquidator. People seems to love it. For a situation like mine, could I use the 320 for easy stabilizer insertion and the Liquidator for easy FC insertion? Am I being silly? Or is this a decent option? BTW, I am not super schooled on pools yet. I have been winging it for the last two years. :)
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You pretty much only have to add stabilizer once. You only lose it through draining, splashout, or overflowing from a massive rainstorm. You don't need a stabilizer feeder.

An automatic feeder for chlorine should be all you need. You'll still need to test the water and adjust the flow or the pH from time to time.

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You're learning very quickly!

Often times pool builders also sell pool chemicals. If you use pucks and have high CYA, then you will get algae and the pool store can sell you algaecide, clarifer, floc, bags of "shock", etc....

In reality, if you don't have a SWG or a liquid chlorine feeder, it is convenient to have a puck feeder for when you go on vacation etc...But the majority of the time you won't use your puck feeder. Just add liquid chlorine manually by pouring it into the pool.
 
TheDerf74 said:
Do they make pucks for chlorination that don't have the stabilizer built in? If not, why would anyone want the feeder in the first place? Seems like it would only get you into trouble with CYA levels.
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Bingo!! You are learning quickly.

Sodium hypochlorite is inherently very unstable. Literally, to give it a shelf life and give you the ability to get it to your pool, they have to stabilize it somehow. In bleach they use salts, in dichlor and trichlor they use CYA, and in Calcium Hypochlorite they use (you guessed it!...) calcium.

As a byproduct, the salt is the only one you can pretty much ignore. If the salt builds up, who cares? If the CYA or calcium builds up, well.... That's the reason why most of us use plain old bleach.
 
Smykowski said:
Sodium hypochlorite is inherently very unstable. Literally, to give it a shelf life and give you the ability to get it to your pool, they have to stabilize it somehow. In bleach they use salts,
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Not to be picky (well, OK, to be picky), salt does not stabilize bleach. The salt is in bleach as a by-product of the way that bleach is made which is by bubbling in chlorine gas into a solution of lye (sodium hydroxide). This is done as part of the chlor-alkali process.

Cl2(g) + 2NaOH ---> NaOCl + NaCl + H2O
Chlorine Gas + Sodium Hydroxide (lye) ---> Sodium Hypochlorite (bleach) + Sodium Chloride (salt) + Water
 
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Regarding the earlier question about a supplier for Cal Hypo pucks... without the stabilizer. I found a company, WMS Aquatics, that does sell compressed Calcium Hypo pucks. No price mentioned. No specifics about erosion rate, or compatability with something like a Nature 2.
 

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