HELP! Put the wrong chemical in our pool!

Jun 19, 2011
1
Hi everyone, you're going to think I'm crazy but my sister accidentally poured "Cabot Problem-Solver Wood Brightener" in our pool instead of "Sustain Summer Shield Chlorine Extender" since they are both in almost the same exact bottle. OOPS! We have an above-ground pool that is a round 18' by 48" and holds approximately 7,100 gallons.

This wood-brightener is supposed to be dissovled in a 5-quart bucket of water, so needless to say it is fairly diluted in our pool. What worries us is that the main ingredient for the woodbrightener is Oxalic Acid (which we are aware some people use to get stains off of their pool liner) but because of the company's policy not to give away the exact composition of their product, we don't know the exact amount of Oxalic Acid.

Of course we would like to avoid draining the pool, especially since the water appears normal and tests normal with our "Aqua Chek Test Strips", but obviously don't want anyone to swim in the pool until we know it is safe. I will put the full ingredient list for the product below and would really appreciate it if someone could help us figure this out. Thank you!

Kelly


Ingredient list (in order) for "Cabot Problem-Solver Wood Brightener" one quart container

-Water
-Oxalic Acid
-Amine light stabilizer
-Bis (1,2,2,6,6-Pentamethyl-4-Piperidiryl)
-Sebacate
-Dimenthyl Sebacate
 
Guess thats why people are taught to read :lol:

The compound will be as you say quite diluted and the oxalic acid will sequester any metals in the pool so that good be good news. The Dimenthyl Sebacate isn't water soluble so will probably just sink to the bottom so vac it out if you can see it, it may form up with any dirt in the pool being a polymer.

The Amine light stabilizer, looks like it may help your CYA reduce the photo oxidisation of the chlorine with any luck
 
The oxalic acid will get oxidized by chlorine so you may find a temporarily higher-than-normal chlorine demand, but at least when that's over the oxalic acid will be gone -- converted to carbon dioxide.

If the amount of oxalic acid is large and/or you have high Calcium Hardness (CH), then you may find the pool water getting cloudy from calcium oxalate. Since your pool appears normal, it sounds like that didn't happen so that's good.
 
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