How are you storing your chemicals...

[RASelkirk]

Hi All,

This used to not be an issue when chems came in plastic buckets with sealing lids, but more and more are now coming in plastic bags that don't necessarily reseal. I have a 6' x 8' pump room in the back corner of a garage, have always stored my chems there, except the salt which is in the main garage. My last 12-pack of shock came in 1# bags that tend to disintegrate and give off fumes over time causing massive corrosion in that small a room. I ended up moving the remaining shock outdoors in an old bucket that didn't seal as well as I thought, went to use it and it was all clotted together in a tacky mess. Not to mention the gallon plastic jug of "Liquid Fire" drain cleaner which has so much sulfuric acid it weighs 15.5#. It's just sitting inside my overhead door on the floor, waiting to burst and wreak havoc!

Just looking to see what others are doing...

Russ

 

[Joshii]

We don't recommend powder shock because it contains cyanuric acid which builds up in your pool over time and makes the chlorine less effective. I use liquid shock which is just concentrated bleach and I store it in an outdoor shed.

 

[JoyfulNoise]

Ok. First off, that sulfuric acid is extremely dangerous stuff and it should be disposed of properly if it’s not being used. It’s not only corrosive to just about everything, it can cause serious tissue damage to skin, eyes, etc. Not trying to sound like a nanny, but I worked many years with industrial hygiene engineers in a large manufacturing facility and we would NEVER use sulfuric acid at that concentration outside of a protective fume hood. The risk of injury is just too great.

As for pool chems - muriatic acid can be safely stored outdoors. If in one gallon jugs, they should be held in a larger secondary container. Using a plastic deck box is a great way to hide them out of sight.

We don’t recommend using powdered shock regularly here. Liquid chlorine is the better choice. If you can’t get it in a tub with a safe lid, then you’re stuck storing it in its original packages. A 5 gallon bucket with a vented lid could be a good storage method. You want to keep chlorine products in a cool and dry space away from light and heat. The cooler it is, the less reactive it will be. If you use the powdered chlorine sources then you need to use the entire package and not leave opened partials around. That is just a recipe for disaster. Also, never store calcium hypochlorite in the same container with dichlor or trichlor. That can cause a chlorine fire. Again, keeping small quantities of these chemicals in a deck box works pretty well as long as they can be kept cool and dry.

 

[an1vrsy]

Just looking to see what others are doing...

Let's see, I have a SWG so that is installed at the equipment pad. When the water is too cold, I use liquid chlorine which is in the laundry room. The muriatic acid is in a plastic container outside. The powdered 25 lbs bag of CYA is in the garage. The 40 lb bags of pool salt and water softener salt are in the garage, too.

 

[RASelkirk]

Outside of December -> March, cool and dry are never used in the same sentence down here. If my stuff is to be stored outside of the living area, it will be hot and muggy. Regardless, sounds like I need to look into a deck box of some sort. At least if something does get loose in it, I can rinse it out. If granulated shock didn't make noxious fumes, I'd keep it in the laundry room. After this is gone, I'll look into the liquid CL2.

Don't know what I was thinking on that Liquid Fire, bought for my kitchen drain thinking it was like Draino where you always run out before anything happens. This took one 4 oz dose to clear it, now I'm sitting on a near-full gallon. I'll repurpose one of my old 5 gal buckets as a secondary container for obvious reasons.

Russ

 

[JoyfulNoise]

The liquid fire can be diluted into a large amount of water and then poured into an external drain. The last page of this MSDS has disposal instructions -

http://www.tmssouth.com/downloads/liquid%20fire%20msds1.pdf