Switching from trichlor to BBB, how much bleach to add daily

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TresW

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Jan 26, 2008
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Forney, TX
I've been digging around this forum plus looked at Jason's calculator and am still confused about how much bleach to put in our pool daily, here's some background info...

We have a new IG gunite 12k gallon pool and have been using trichlor pucks in the inline feeder to maintain the FC levels (pool's been up and running for 2 months now). As you all know, this also adds CYA. I've been keeping tabs on the CYA level and have been saying I will switch to BBB as soon as the CYA starts to get up there. Well much to my surprise it's climbed a LOT faster than I expected. A month ago it was at around 25, 2 weeks ago it was 35 and yesterday it tested at 50 (all tests using the TF100 test kit). FC has been maintained at 2 ppm throughout. CC has remained at 0. Baking soda has been used to control TA (kept at 80) and PH has been remaining stable (7.4) since the first 2 weeks (before then I had to add acid to keep it down). The water has been nice and clear, no problems. But the climbing CYA has me worried and I want to switch to BBB before it gets too high.

So, my question is how much bleach do we need to put in daily? We will of course be doing daily TC and PH tests as usual and weekly full TF100 tests, but I don't know where to start. I tried Jason's calc and plugged in 2 ppm and it says 50 oz. of 6% bleach, surely I don't need to add that every day do I?

Thank you!!
 
Not anymore, but last year it was. I made the switch to 12.5% at the end of last season, and this season is really not here yet. It is sleeting today...

Plus, I have had a swamp to clear up, which is almost there, just a bit cloudy now. But if you just test daily, and read your results, go back and check the pool calculator for an amount until you get used to it.
 
Tres,

If you assume you're gonna lose about 2ppmFC daily, then 50oz is the right number (6%) Of course, you may lose a little more or less than that but that's a good starting point.

What's you CH ppm? Cal-hypo may be a good alternative for a while if you don't want to deal with the clorox.
 
Thanks, I'll start with 50 oz. and see how it tests. I'm surprised it takes that much, I don't like the thought of trashing all those bottles and we don't have plastic recycling in our area unfortunately. I read someone else's comment that they return bottles to a pool store for refilling, I'll have to see if I can find that around here somewhere.


duraleigh said:
What's you CH ppm? Cal-hypo may be a good alternative for a while if you don't want to deal with the clorox.
Click to expand...

Are you asking what it is testing or what the content in the tabs is? It's testing 2 ppm daily (tested in the evenings). I'm not sure about the content in the pucks, I can check it at home though. We go through 3 pucks in about 10 days. I guess that's why I'm so surprised it takes 50 oz. of bleach daily to replace the pucks!
 
CH is typically Calcium Hardness....I think you thought I meant chlorine.

that's why I'm so surprised it takes 50 oz. of bleach daily to replace the pucks!
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It may not, 3 pucks in 10 days doesn't sound (I'm too lazy to do the math) like a 2ppm daily loss......I may be wrong.

Don't confuse your steady level of 2ppm with daily loss. You could have a daily loss of 1ppm or 1000ppm and still read 2ppm if you tested the same time each day.
 
^^ chem geek would be the one who could do it lickity split in his head...

I have a 30k gal pool, and I throw in ~96oz a day (some times a full gal if I don't think I'll be able to add more before the morning. I have about 1.5-2ppm Cl loss per day, depending if we swim. with an ~ 1/2 size pool of mine, you can expect to do ~48 oz a day, depending on amount of sun and bather load, some days it might be closer to 60 oz if you had a lot of people in the pool.
 
Tres,

With a CH 0f 180 I think I'd steer away from Cal-Hypo as a source of chlorine....You're calcium will be too high before summers end, I'm afraid.

You might see if you can find some 12.5% chlorine.....it'll cut your liquid volume in half.

I get it (12.5%) at a pressure cleaning supply store......about the same price as clorox but half the volume.

If you stick with Clorox, you might find that you can put in a 96 oz jug every other day and that will be fine, too. Your FC will probably vary around 2-6ppm.....that's almost ideal.
 

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(this is a bit off topic, but is in response to a comment Tres made w.r.t. recycling that may be of interest to folks)

Tres -

I see you are concerned about recycling the plastic bottles. They should be #2 plastic. I'm surprised that you don't have recycling for #2 plastic. In any event, if you do not, do you think your local government would be interested in offering this recycling if there were an inexpensive way to provide the service? Our town recently started providing single stream recycling with an incentive provided through a company called "RecycleBank". RecycleBank outfits the garbage trucks with a scale, automated lift, and RFID reader. They then provide residents with a blue can with an RFID tag. You simply put all of your recyclable materials in the blue can. You have an online account where you can see how much you have recycled. Even better, you can earn discounts/coupons to many stores. We can earn up to about $400/year for recycling.....that's a lot of bleach bottles and beer cans! The company is still pretty small, but was featured in a very recent issue of Fortune magazine as being a top "Green" company. Cool concept that will certainly help people recycle more, in my opinion.
 
Thanks for your thoughts Smuggs! We don't live inside a city and our garbage pickup is via a private company. There are actually two companies that offer trash pickup and we switched from one to the other because the other offered recycling pickup. Well wouldn't you know it, as soon as we made the switch they quit doing the recycling pickup due to lack of interest! So now our only avenue is to haul stuff to recycling pickup sites which we do for paper, cardboard and cans. But there's no place around us that does plastic unfortunately.
 
TresW said:
So, my question is how much bleach do we need to put in daily? We will of course be doing daily TC and PH tests as usual and weekly full TF100 tests, but I don't know where to start. I tried Jason's calc and plugged in 2 ppm and it says 50 oz. of 6% bleach, surely I don't need to add that every day do I?

Thank you!!
Click to expand...

It takes 50oz of CL to raise 2ppm in your pool, this is if you start at 0 CL. What you need to do it test your CL level daily like you said and add 25oz of CL for every 1ppm you want to reach. Example, you want a 2ppm level and you test and have 1ppm, you will need to add 1 more ppm. (which is 25 oz of CL). For a CYA level of 50 ppm you should keep your CL level between 3-5ppm based on Ben's CYA chart. For more information on this, click on ChemGeeks stickey on CYA levels. So, if you test and have 1ppm CL and you want to reach 5 ppm then you need to add 100oz of cl of 6 %.

My pool used .5 gal of (10.5%) of CL during the summer which is twice the size of yours. But every pool is different and the sun exposure, algae play a big difference. This year I will be testing a higher CYA level and hopefully my CL demand will go down a little.
 
You can always use the Rule of Thumb to figure how much chlorine to use.

In a 10,000 gallon pool, one gallon of bleach or liquid chlorine will add exactly its concentration to the pool. So if it's regular 5.25% bleach, it will add 5.25ppm of Free Chlorine. If it's 6%, it will add 6ppm.

If your bottle is only 3 quarts (3/4 of a gallon) and it's 6% it will add 4.5ppm of Free Chlorine.

If you double the water to 20,000 gallons, the concentration is halved unless you use twice as much.

So if your pool is 5k, 10k, 15k, 20k, 25k or 30k, your arithmatic is very simply and can be done in your head.

Just decide what level you want to increase your FC by.


For those of you in metric countries, it works EXACTLY the same way as long as you figure everything in liters instead of gallons.
 
HELP
I think I just messed up with math (again) I need to raise my ppm to 20. My TC is at 1 I added 2 182 oz 6% bleach and 1- 96 oz bleach- I figured that it would raise my ppm around 19 ppm- I have a 15000 gal fiberglas pool that I am battling an algae problem- cya is 55 ph is 7.5 alk- 100 ch- 23[/size] Please tell me I added the right amount. I was going to get some Calcium Hyo chlorite but could only find the Walmart HTH brand whci I read was not good enough _ (48 % when it should be 68%) Have I messed up?
 
I calculate that you added 460 oz and should have added 591 oz of 6% bleach to raise FC by 19 in 15,000 gallons.

My Pool Calculator, see the link in my signature, is very handy for making this kind of calculation.
 

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