Cal Hypo vs Trichlor, how quickly do they dissolve?

[solarboy]

Good evening/morning/afternoon.
I'm using some Cal Hypo bars (HTH) and Triclor pucks to raise my CYA and CH on a pool I've recently drained. I'm finding that the Cal Hypo bars seem to dissolve much slower and add much less FC than the Trichlor on a tablet for tablet basis. The Cal Hypo stock was old (the bottom fell out of the bucket on the way in the van) but I didn't imagine it could degrade. I did leave them in the plastic sleeve they come in and that was removed from the skimmer after.
I had to run the pump almost twice as long to maintain the same FC level. As soon as I went back to the Trichlor the usage went back to normal (removing doubt as to weather I had a nascent algae problem).
Should I just add more bars to the skimmer ?
Thanks in advance for any help.

 

[JasonLion]

The plastic sleeves tend to make the rate at which they dissolve somewhat unpredictable.

Cal-hypo and trichlor can both lose strength if they get too hot, especially if they are hot over long periods of time. This process is slow. It would normally have to be years before you noticed them being weaker than usual.

 

[solarboy]

Thanks Jason. It's probably a bit of both. They were from the suppliers display and had been there ever since I've used that supplier. The writing had all but faded off the bucket ! Probably why they were cheap. You pay your dollar...