Why do trichlor tablets exist?

Jump to latest Follow Reply
Z

Z06Boricua

0
Mar 5, 2012
80
Central FL
I'm not really sure where this goes, so please feel free to move it if needed. I've just had something that's been kinda bugging me ever since I came across the whole BBB ideology. When I had my pool built recently, my builder included a Rainbow inline chlorinator. It seems that trichlor pucks are the most common way that people add chlorine to their pools unless they have a SWCG.

We know from being on TFP that maintaining a pool is definitely not rocket science. It's nothing more than a whole bunch of common sense. We know that trichlor adds CYA. We know that CYA is good up to a certain level, and bad if it gets too high. We know that pucks keep adding CYA and that it doesn't go away unless you drain water. So why the heck does the pool industry keep pushing trichlor on people? How can pool stores not realize the damage that they're doing to consumers through gross misinformation? Why aren't there other sources of good information out there like this site? I just don't get how people can be so wrong about maintaining pools. Are pool store employees incapable of simply saying, "I don't know" so they instead make everything up as they go along? Why hasn't anyone done anything to stop this madness? I just don't think I've ever come across a situation in my life where an entire industry was so wrong about so many things. Can anyone shed any light on this?

Jose
 
I chalk it up to:
1. It has the illusion of extreme convenience, which people tend to fall head-over-heals for without much thought.
2. It is very "marketable" in that it is a nice convenient packaging, ships easily, and has that "just pop it in the pool and forget about it" marketability.
3. Most people are scared to death of even the slightest amount of science/chemistry being thrown their way, so they just don't choose to educate themselves.
4. Conspiracy theory alert! They end up creating CYA problem that the pool owner doesn't even know about and so they end up having to become reliant upon the countless other %$^# additives for pools to try and manage their water. Which means an endless purchasing cycle of chemicals and money in the pockets of the product manufactures. Without the CYA issue, the pool supply industry would have hardly any need to exist!
 
Trichlor will only create issues when CYA is allowed to accumulate but this doesn't happen to all pools. For example, a pool with a small sand filter that is backwashed frequently or a pool in a winter zone that is used only 3 months out the year where CYA degrades over the winter may not have a problem with high CYA levels so they can use the pucks without as much worry. Also, the pucks can be a great way to add CYA at the same time adding chlorine. So I still think they are very useful to the industry but they must be used properly. I think the biggest issue is educating the public about some of the downsides of using trichlor.
 
As a guy who has previously helped a neighbor maintain his 30' AGP using Trichlor, and a new TFP convert for an Inground pool I am maintaining - I can attest to the fact that TFP takes more daily work. TFP isn't conducive to absentee maintenance of a pool or someone who cannot be near the pool daily unless SWG or Liquidator is added to the picture.

The truth is (as pointed out above) many people have enough water change and loss of CYA due to loss of FC over the winter to keep the CYA from going so high that they cannot maintain the pool. Additionally people are willing to spend money on algaecides, phosphate removers, etc.

TFP is cheaper, leads to fewer issues over time, but it takes more work each day than pucks. It's like not taking care of your teeth - don't brush and you have more time available for other things - but eventually it's going to catch up to you - however not everyone has the same level of problems and not everyone will lose their teeth...
 
I was a happy puck user for 30 years, starting pretty much when the pucks were first invented. We had an unlined steel pool that needed rust spots repaired every year and cheap water. We emptied every year so CYA would never build for more than six months. It was only when I got a plaster pool in 2004 that the puck system caused problems starting in the second year.
 
I suspect that most pool store sales people get their information from the chemical companies who want to push sales. Also it's a good business model. The more problems people have the more they come in to the store and the store has the opportunity to sell stuff.
 
The order things were discovered in makes a large difference. Chlorine is inherently unstable. There are very few ways to stabilize it enough for shipping and have it still work in a pool. When trichlor was discovered it was a huge breakthrough, a reasonably stable easy to transport form of chlorine that has reasonable manufacturing costs. It wasn't until many years later that it was really understood what CYA really does in a pool. In the mean time an entire industry had grown up manufacturing and selling trichlor tablets.
 

Enjoying this content?

Support TFP with a donation.

Give Support
That makes sense Jason, but what I don't get is how so few people in the pool industry still don't really understand how CYA works. Are they really that ignorant? Or do they know better but continue to push it just to make a buck? I couldn't believe what I was reading in the "craziest pool story" thread, and it seems like this is pretty common everywhere.

Jose
 
This is a good thread and I had the same questions as Jose. Before discovering this site, I bought a 40 pound container of those pucks. The professional I paid $1200 to drain my pool and clean it out told me to always leave a puck in the skimmer basket so I figured I should buy bulk. Well, thankfully, I learned here about CYA and what those pucks would do to it. Fortunately, my CYA is still a bit under 30, but I just leave it there so I can use a combo of bleach and still have room to work with the pucks if I am away for a few days. I am sure I'm being overly conservative with the CYA, especially now that I have learned it will drop in the winter.

But still, you cross that CYA line and there is no easy way back.
 
mas985 said:
Trichlor will only create issues when CYA is allowed to accumulate but this doesn't happen to all pools. For example, a pool with a small sand filter that is backwashed frequently or a pool in a winter zone that is used only 3 months out the year where CYA degrades over the winter may not have a problem with high CYA levels so they can use the pucks without as much worry. Also, the pucks can be a great way to add CYA at the same time adding chlorine. So I still think they are very useful to the industry but they must be used properly. I think the biggest issue is educating the public about some of the downsides of using trichlor.
Click to expand...

+1

My father maintained our pools through the 70's-80's on trichlor tabs. We had enough rain and he backwashed/refilled quite often and we never had a problem with algae and the pool was always sparkling clear.
 
Jason: interesting history lesson there. There are so many cases out there like this; an industry becomes based around existing scientific knowledge, and it doesn't keep up with the changes in current scientific understanding, or it does keep up, but chooses not to change anything. Guess we will never know which one it is.
 
Keep in mind that very very few people in the pool industry really understand any meaningful amount of chemistry. They are just doing the same things they were taught to do by people who came before them. Professional pool operators learn from the previous generation of professional pool operators. Pool store clerks mostly learn from the previous set of clerks and by reading product labels. There isn't really any source of reliable information.

Meanwhile, very little scientific study is done on swimming pool chemistry. Pool chemistry research in an academic setting isn't likely to get grants and tends to require specialized equipment that there isn't any budget for. The only major corporate sponsors are going to be the chemical companies that depend on maintaing the status quo.

Politically, it takes deaths before anything happens. Someone died because of a defective drain cover, so we have very aggressive laws about drain covers. But tens of thousands of people having minor respiratory problems from airborne CC in indoor pools, or pools turning green because no one taught home owners how to maintain their water chemistry has no political impact and will likely never be addressed by legislation.
 
There's also the statistical factor where some pools can have high CYA levels yet not get algae because their water is low in algae nutrients (usually phosphates). So with enough Trichlor-only users seeing no problems with their pools, that's enough for an industry to continue to claim that it certainly couldn't be CYA that is the problem. Of course, that doesn't do much good for the rest of the pool users unfortunate enough to not have enough dilution to keep CYA in check and to have higher algae nutrient levels in their pools. It's really hard to know the actual percentages, but based on reports on this forum and observations of their neighbors and other pools, I'd guess that in any given year around 20% of Trichlor-only pools may have problems (i.e. unusual chlorine demand, cloudy water or visible green algae). Maybe it's higher than that, but some pools don't show problems while others show them nearly every year. We're somewhat biased here since people tend to come to forums when they have problems, but we do get additional reports from service folks and others as well. 20% of 10 million residential pools is 2 million pools. That's a huge market for "shock" products, algicides, phosphate removers, clarifiers, flocculants, etc. where such products have higher margins than standard Trichlor pucks/tabs. It's not intentional built-in obsolescence since it's just the way the chemistry worked out, but the effect is similar.

One really needs to understand both chemistry and biology to see the big picture of what goes on between the race of algae growth limited by temperature, sunlight and algae nutrients vs. the rate of killing algae determined by the active chlorine level (related to the FC/CYA ratio).
 
Where is it documented that CYA levels decrease over the winter?

Everything I've read on this site (other than this thread) states that the only way to lower CYA is by draining and refilling.

So?

CYA levels will, in fact, lower over the winter, if you live in a place that gets freezing temperatures?
 
Well, sometimes the CYA goes down a little. Sometimes it goes down a LOT when a bacteria converts it to ammonia. Sometimes it does not go down.

Posted from my Droid with Tapatalk ... sorry if my response is short ;)
 
The conversion of CYA into ammonia or nitrates or nitrogen gas by bacteria is not a predictable or controllable event, but it occurs in some pools and is described technically in this thread. If bacteria convert it to ammonia or to nitrites, then there can be a huge chlorine demand upon spring opening. If the bacteria convert it to nitrates or to nitrogen gas, then there is a far smaller chlorine demand upon opening (just enough needed to kill the bacteria and possibly algae if present).
 
I like using the trichlor tablets at the beginning of the year with my SWG pool since it doesn't work until it gets up to 70 degrees. Each of the two years I opened my pool, my CYA was ZERO, so I added minimum of CYA to get it up and then used the trichlor tablets for a month or more until my CYA was where I needed it OR my temperature was high enough to kick on the SWG and if so, added the appropriate amount of CYA. Real easy chemical balancing.
 

Enjoying this content?

Support TFP with a donation.

Give Support
You must log in or register to reply here.
Thread Status
Hello , This thread has been inactive for over 60 days. New postings here are unlikely to be seen or responded to by other members. For better visibility, consider Starting A New Thread.
Top Bottom
Back
Jump to latest Follow Reply