Borates Rock!

[agent86]

Just another plug for using borates...

I've been using borates now for approximately 3-4 years and have yet needed to shock pool. During the beginning of this May I noticed some algae growing on one of my walls. After investigating further my salt generator quit working (guessing for 1-2 weeks). It was that common error message that could only be fixed by re-soldering one of those bad solder joints on the salt water generator circuit board. So I followed the instructions found out on the Internet and fixed it. Well, all I did was brush off the algae and kicked up the salt generator to the normal setting I use, and bam...algae never came back. After testing chemicals in water a few days later everything was in perfect ranges...

People in the pool store (that's where I like to go to get pool salt and pool acid so I can listen to everyone) look at me crazy when I say I haven't shocked my pool in over 4 years!

 

[jblizzle]

So what are you claiming the borates did for you? With adequate chlorine, no one has to "shock" the pool.

 

[chem geek]

Probably the fact that the pool didn't turn into a swamp even though the SWG failed and chlorine presumably went to zero for an extended period of time. The borates may have taken the edge off of algae growth. However, it's hard to know because algae growth is also limited by nutrient level and it is possible that the phosphate or nitrate was low in the pool.

So borates, as with other algaecides such as weekly Polyquat dosing, can be seen as insurance if the chlorine gets too low. Such algaecides are not necessary if one maintains the proper chlorine level and the borates are a weak algaecide at 50 ppm.