Inherited outdoor bromine pool

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D

Donniehoff

Member
Apr 26, 2023
10
Philadelphia
Pool Size
20500
Surface
Vinyl
Chlorine
Liquid Chlorine
Hi everyone, I just moved into a home this winter that has an outdoor pool. The previous owner used bromine, although she had many chemicals left over, including chlorine pucks. She raised police dogs and it appears her dogs are the only ones who used the pool. I am unsure if she used bromine anytime recently, but the water did change to green/yellow when we shocked it during opening this week. Vinyl liner so I can't drain without replacing. I've read up a ton on the forum about bromine/chlorine so I know the best/only true way to get rid of all bromine is to empty the pool and refill.

1. Is there a way I can use liquid chlorine to activate the bromide to bromine and use it to sanitize the pool? I know bromine will not stable and will be hard to balance, but i don't want to replace liner now.

2. The water did clear up pretty quickly, so there is a good chance she has just been using the chlorine and has not added bromine in years. Would diluting the water actually help use up the bromine? I have no problem draining the pool a few inches, and refilling a few inches again and again to try and dilute.

3. Also, is it sufficient enough to use the test strips to test the ppm of bromine that is activated by the chlorine? I am planning on only using liquid chlorine.

Thanks!
 
There is no way to distinguish bromine from chlorine by testing. They react with the indicators in exactly the same way.
 
Interesting. Could I also just drain a few feet at a time and do partial fills? I know i can only go a foot or so from the bottom of shallow end because of the Vinyl liner.

Also, I still have about 1 ppm of free chlorine, so I am hoping this process was started by the previous owner. My CYA is 0, so could I add CYA and see if it maintains a higher FC reading after adding more chlorine?
 
The no drain water exchange will be your best bet to change out your water. Partial drains and refills will dilute the water but you have no way of knowing how much bromine remains. The safest way to be rid of it is to change the water out entirely.
 
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Serial dilutions are inefficient and use up more water. You are better off simply doing an exchange drain to avoid liner shift.

You can add 30ppm CYA and then follow the SLAM process to see if you pass. A clean and clear swimming pool should only lose about 2-4ppm FC per day so if you’re having trouble maintaining FC, then you may have some residual bromide in the pool.
 
Doing so as we speak. Thanks for the info. I also found these labels on the 5 gallon buckets of powdered chemicals in the shed. Looks like she was actually trying to balance a true bromine pool outside. There goes my hopes of hoping she was already trying to use chlorine.
 

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Yeah. Those are BCDMH tablets. The previous owner was running a bromine pool and probably tearing through a ton of bromine tablets to maintain a proper residual. The dimethylhydantoin (DMH) part of the tabs builds up in the water and acts a little bit like CYA does towards chlorine. Problem is, it’s take much higher levels of DMH to have a similar effect and it doesn’t protect bromine from UV much. So it just winds up becoming over stabilized and reducing the effective sanitizing bromine concentration. After enough tabs have dissolved, you have to drain and refill to get the water back into balance.
 
You have been so helpful i appreciate it. If the water exchange isn’t sufficient, and I don’t want to drain completely and have liner replaced, what are my options for sanitizing the pool for this summer to make it safe for us and the kids to swim in?
 
Not sure what you mean by "Not Sufficient" - if you do a full exchange via no-drain water exchange per the procedure in the link above, allowing for an extra 10% or so, it should be virtually the same as a complete water replacement. The idea is that the fresh water goes where the fresh water will stay, and at the same time the old water is removed. With no mixing, no pump, nothing stirring the water together, so long as you follow the instructions in the article to know if you're draining from the top and adding at the bottom or draining from the bottom and adding to the top, you should be successful in removing enough of the old water that you can treat it like a fresh fill.
 
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My biggest issue is we live in the boonies and have a well, which I have no idea how deep. Last thing I want to do is burn out the well pump. For the amount of exchange I need, there is no way I can let the hose on that long. I drained the pool to about 18 inches above the shallow end before starting the exchange to decrease the amount I need to exchange.
 
One thing you can do is leverage rain water. Obviously setting up a large rainwater harvesting tank would be awesome but not everyone has the time or money for all that. But a very simple thing to do would be to watch the weather reports closely and if you happen to see a couple of rainy days coming your way then you can drain the pool an inch or three and let the storm fill it back up. Rain water is basically pure water for free. If you let your pool fill with it, it will dilute any contaminants and save you from having to run the well pump.
 
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It’s actually going to rain the next 3 days straight so I’m going to start draining again and turn the hose on with the rain and see how much I can get through! Hoping to exchange as much as possible, even thought I can’t do it at one time. I also have no time frame so I can keep exchanging til I decide it’s time to fill.

Is there a specific amount of time that I can leave my pool half drained? It’s currently 18 inches above the shallow end, but could I cause any damage to the liner leaving it like this for a week or 2?
 
Donniehoff said:
Is there a specific amount of time that I can leave my pool half drained? It’s currently 18 inches above the shallow end, but could I cause any damage to the liner leaving it like this for a week or 2?
Click to expand...

Don’t go lower than 18” in the shallow end. You don’t want the liner to wrinkle or shift.
 
Chuckiechan said:
I'm curious... Why could he not just begin adding chlorine and CYA and getting the pool into spec's just is if it were a normal pool? It seems to me that over time the bomine will be gone.
Click to expand...

With a significant amount of bromide in the water it will take forever for the bromine to naturally go away. Bromide stays in the water unless fresh water exchanges out contaminated pool water.

Adding chlorine to a pool with bromide ion causes all the chlorine to be reduced to chloride as the bromide gets oxidized to bromine. Bromine then breaks down very quickly with UV exposure and turns back into bromide. The cycle repeats until all the sanitizer is spent. A bromine pool acts a lot like a chlorine pool with no CYA in the water - the half life of chlorine with no stabilizer is under 30mins.
 
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Well….the liner is starting to bubble. Huge bubble in shallow end, and some bubbles on sides in deep end. Looks like I’m getting a new liner. Frustrating because I felt it was going so well, and I didn’t let the water go a centimeter lower than 18” in the shallow end.
 
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Good news, the bubbles in liner has gone away. It was because the water table was high. I have refilled water and have started my SLAM yesterday.
CYA=30-35
FC- had to add a lot at first with what it was eating up, but I am losing about 4ppm today.

Pool is very clear, and I expect to do my OCLT tomorrow night.

One last question, should I test my CC before attempting the OCLT? I haven't bothered testing since SLAMing yet. Overall I am very satisfied with how it's going, and will never understand why anyone doesn't use the FAS test kit for all chlorine testing.
 

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