bromine questions

[poolio]

2 part question. 1st part I know cya does absolutely nothing for bromine as far as protecting it from the sun. My question is though does it have the same negative affects as it does with chlorine if you have it in the pool say at 100-200 ppm. 2nd question is since I have always heard once a bromine pool always a bromine pool unless you drain a lot of the water out, if you start up with bromine and then were to switch to chlorine tabs how would that affect the water. My thinking is the chlorine is about half the cost of the bromine. If cya doesn't affect bromine then one could load up with bromine and then run with chlorine tabs. I don't know exactly how that would work but just wanted to see how that would work. ]

poolio, no relation to coolio

 

[Ohm_Boy]

Here's what Ben had to say about it so long ago...
http://poolsolutions.com/tips/tip10.html

 

[poolio]

that doesn't really answer my question, cause here is my thought since bromine can't be stabalized that means it doesn't bond with the stabalizer like chlorine does, so that means you could have 500ppm cya in the pool and it won't affect bromine. now once a bromine pool always a bromine that means if you add chlorine it gets converted to bromine, so you add some bromine and then after that just used the 3" pucks, which we all know is easier and cheaper than bleach. And since the chlorine gets converted to bromine and the bromine is unaffected by cya then we are set. I dunno just wanted to see if that would work or not, or where the flaw in my thinking is.

 

[JasonLion]

after that just used the 3" pucks, which we all know is easier and cheaper than bleach

In most areas the prices of trichlor and bleach are very similar. Overall trichlor is a few cents cheaper, but it is a very small difference.

One problem with bromine is the smell, which tends to bother many people. But the main problem with bromine in outdoor pools is that sunlight deactivates it very quickly. All of your chlorine would go to reactivating the bromine, which will then be deactivated again by sunlight, and you are left with insufficient sanitizer. It would take vast quantaties of chlorine to keep enough bromine active.

 

[poolio]

This is just something I am trying to get a theory on and I probably need chem geek to answer but anyways. I guess to make it simple my two main questions are, 1. does cya negatively affect bromine the way it does chlorine. and 2. if it doesn't negatively affect it and you are someone who currently uses bromine and likes to use it and doesn't want to lug around bleach jugs, could you use Chlorine tabs instead of the Bromine tabs which are much more expensive than the Chlorine tabs. And due to the bromine pool always being bromine will it stay bromine forever even though you are using the cheaper chlorine tabs. So could you in effect run a bromine pool but using chlorine.

 

[Guest]

The reason it won't work is that the bromide ions in the water will eventually get 'used up' and coverted into bromates. That is why the bromine tabs are needed to supply both chlorine and bromide to the pool. There is some slight stabilization effect on the bromine from the dimethyhydantion in the tabs that has a similar effect that CYA has on chlorine. In high levels it makes the bromine less effective. High levels of CYA would make the chlorine less avaialbe to oxidize bromide inot hypobromous acid so you really don't want CYA in a bromine pool. If you are going to oxidize with chlorine you should use an unstabilized chlorine source./

 

[poolio]

so in effect what you are saying is that the old saying once a bromine pool always a bromine pool is not true. because you could always oxidize using monopersulfate

 

[JasonLion]

Bromine goes away eventually. But it can take a really long time, too long to be practical to do a conversion without complete water replacement. So even though you have to add bromine reguarly, if you stop adding bromine it could be months or years before it is all gone.

 

[Guest]

so in effect what you are saying is that the old saying once a bromine pool always a bromine pool is not true. because you could always oxidize using monopersulfate

no, it just becomes a pool with 'spent' bromine that cannot form hypobromous acid anymore. It's still a bromine pool, particularly if organic bromine, such as from tablets, is used. If only sodium bromide is used then the pool will eventually revert to a chlorine pool if you use chlorine for activating, but it can take a very long period of time. This is actually one of the biggest problems with using sodium bromide algae treatments. They work well in overstabilized pools the first time you use them since they do take the CYA out of the equation and the lower levels of bromine become effective at killing the algae but on continuded use the create a hugh chlorine demand and make it very difficult to get back to a chlorine pool.