Bleach v corona virus - backup plan?

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Household6

Household6

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Sep 15, 2013
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Fayetteville, NC
Pool Size
38000
Surface
Plaster
Chlorine
Liquid Chlorine
We’ve had a warm winter in NC and I anticipate swimming by early May. As such, I’ve started thinking about starting to stock up on bleach.

I usually purchase around 20 gallons at a time. With all the panic about corona virus amuck, I’m wondering if this is going to be possible this season. I’m hearing Target is already limiting all sanitizing products to a quantity of 6 per item.
Sure hope WalMart is anticipating the frenzy. On the other hand, we’ll all need to re-familiarize ourselves with their dating system in order to ensure we’re not buying stuff that’s been in the shelves more than a few months.

Any suggestions for a backup plan in the event bleach in the quantities needed can’t be attained? The thought of putting granular shock or pucks in our pool . . . OH MY!
 
Calcium hypochlorite powder or pucks are viable options. It will require more careful monitoring of your CH and/or CYA level and could mean occasional partial drains. However, if obtaining enough chlorine for regular chlorination is a problem then the SLAM process is not an option.

First though I would look in to other sources of liquid chlorine. Pool stores try hard to convince people that their product is completely different than bleach, so it might survive the panic buying. It might cost more, but will be more concentrated so at least there will be fewer jugs to carry. That said, it might not come up. There seem to be very specific (and incorrect) panic purchases happening and I haven't heard of bleach being one of them. So here's hoping.
 
markayash said:
My son said a guy was buying 5 or 6 gallons of hand sanitizer at Walmart last week
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Ha, that would have been me on Friday. Oldest kiddo is at Disney World right now and we wanted him to take some hand sanitizer in his pocket and use it every so often, especially before eating. You could not find normal sized containers, even on Amazon, so we got the last thing of sanitizer at Walmart, which happened to be the biggest size available.

We put some in travel sized containers for him, and now we have this massive thing sitting on the counter and dont really know what to do with it. I keep telling my wife if it gets really bad and sanitizer becomes unavailable, that thing is my early retirement plan :)
 
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JJ_Tex said:
I keep telling my wife if it gets really bad and sanitizer becomes unavailable, that thing is my early retirement plan :)
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No special ingredients in hand sanitizer. You can mix it at home. You just need aloe vera gel, sweet almond oil. and at least 70% alcohol. Finding the alcohol will be the difficulty.
 
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ajw22 said:
No special ingredients in hand sanitizer. You can mix it at home. You just need aloe vera gel, sweet almond oil. and at least 70% alcohol. Finding the alcohol will be the difficulty.
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Or... You just spill a little Bacardi 151 on your hands while making a Planter's Punch.
 
No way. Bacardi 151 is a collectors item now that they stopped making it for our safety. So many fun memories with that and Everclear in college.
 
JJ_Tex said:
No way. Bacardi 151 is a collectors item now that they stopped making it for our safety. So many fun memories with that and Everclear in college.
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I had forgotten they stopped making it... Guess I need to hold on to that last bottle I have in the bar.

On edit, at least you can still get 126 proof Wray & Nephew..
 
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Household6 said:
We’ve had a warm winter in NC and I anticipate swimming by early May. As such, I’ve started thinking about starting to stock up on bleach.

I usually purchase around 20 gallons at a time. With all the panic about corona virus amuck, I’m wondering if this is going to be possible this season. I’m hearing Target is already limiting all sanitizing products to a quantity of 6 per item.
Sure hope WalMart is anticipating the frenzy. On the other hand, we’ll all need to re-familiarize ourselves with their dating system in order to ensure we’re not buying stuff that’s been in the shelves more than a few months.

Any suggestions for a backup plan in the event bleach in the quantities needed can’t be attained? The thought of putting granular shock or pucks in our pool . . . OH MY!
Click to expand...

SLAM had not even crossed my mind yet! Did 4 last summer (my own fault). Yikes! Def have to be more diligent this year.

I checked my local pool stores last year and they don’t even offer liquid chlorine, but I’ll try again this year.

Did a Walmart grocery pickup order for today. Was limited to ordering 4 bottles of bleach (it’s usually 6) and when the order came out they brought 1 bottle of the right kind and the other 3 were the no splash and lavender scented.

NC has had 2 confirmed corona cases thus far. Both were in (different) neighboring counties. I get being smart, especially concerned for those in high risk bracket (elderly and immune issues) but this virus stuff is cramping my style!
 
Look around as I greatly suspect you’ll be able to find some liquid shortly. Make some phone calls to janitorial companies and such. Some of these companies likely purchase 5gallon Carboys of 12% that I suspect they’d be willing to order for you if you sweet talk them some.
 
I made a trip to my local Pinch A Penny on Saturday and everything looked normal as far as their stack of bleach containers goes.
 

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