rtpatter said:
Does the cost of the liquidator really warrant the benefits over just a standard chlorinator. To me the hassel of having to deal with Liquid Chlorine over just pucks is really a drawback. I know you said I could use bleach but I assume you would need twice as much bleach 6%(bleach) vs 12%(Liquid Chlorine). Has anyone on this board used the Liquidator with just bleach?
A standard chlorinator is typically used to hold Trichlor tabs/pucks and you need to remember that for every 10 ppm Free Chlorine (FC) added by Trichlor, it also adds 6 ppm to Cyanuric Acid (CYA). So you will build up CYA levels in the pool quite rapidly. If you are adding just 2 ppm FC in the pool every day, and that's probably a low amount depending on sunlight and usage, that's an increase in CYA of 36 ppm per month or over 200 ppm in 6 months. The only way CYA gets reduced is via dilution, but splash-out and backwashing are unlikely to dilute enough unless your pool is small or your season is much shorter than 6 months. You have the same situation with your current floating feeder which is what I used to have and then ran into problems in my pool after 1.5 years of use.
CYA reduces chlorine's effectiveness so that roughly speaking the amount of actual disinfecting and oxidizing chlorine is proportional to the ratio of FC to CYA. So a higher CYA level requires a higher FC level in order to prevent algae growth. In a manually dosed pool, the minimum FC level to prevent algae growth is around 7.5% of the CYA level.
You can operate the pool with higher CYA, but would need to either increase the FC level which would require using supplemental chlorine (chlorinating liquid or unscented bleach) which defeats the purpose of the chlorinator, or you'd have to use an alagecide such as PolyQuat 60 or a phosphate remover on a weekly basis to prevent algae growth and that's on the order of $2 or more per week in extra chemicals.
You can minimize the amount of chlorine that is needed, and therefore the number of trips to the store to buy more chlorine, by using a pool cover that protects the pool from the UV rays of sunlight. I have an opaque electric safety cover and only have to manually add chlorine twice a week because the chlorine usage is not more than 1 ppm FC per day and that's with near daily use of the pool (cover open about 1-2 hours each day; 3-4 hours on weekends). If I didn't have the pool cover, I'd buy The Liquidator.
It is true that even with The Liquidator, you need to haul heavy chlorine to refill it (you're mostly hauling water). The only truly automatic and easy system with minimal maintenance that doesn't increase CH or CYA levels is to get a saltwater chlorine generator (SWG) system that makes chlorine directly in the pool itself using the pool's salt.
Richard
