- Feb 8, 2013
- 1
JasonLion said:Welcome to TFP!
Chlorine added to a bromine pool reactivates the bromine. If you stop adding bromine, eventually a long time later you will run out of bromine to be reactivated. Generally bromine needs to be added at least once per year, often twice a year.
Bromine can be in two states, active sanitizing bromine, and inactive "banked" bromide. As long as you have enough bromine "in the bank" you can use chlorine to reactivate it. Bromide is lost very very slowly in normal usage. It can be lost more quickly if you pump or splash a lot of water out of the pool or when you backwash your filter (if your filter needs backwashing).
Does this mean that if you started using chlorine instead of bromine, eventually your "banked" bromine will run out and you will have a chlorine pool?
I have a bromine pool and want to convert it to chlorine. I'm getting confused on why you would need to drain the pool to fully convert from bromine to chlorine. If adding chlorine will reactivate your banked bromine and raise your bromine levels in the pool, doesn't this mean you are paying chlorine prices to sanitize with bromine? By continuing to use chlorine, it seems like the bromine will eventually disappear, but during the whole process you will either have bromine or chlorine sanitizing your pool. Why deal with draining it? I'm no chemist, so I may be missing something, but as long as a sanitizer is present and nothing is growing in the pool, it seems silly to deal with draining water just so you have 100% chlorine
Sorry to bring up an old thread. This is the only thread I was able to find online that discusses the effects of converting bromine to chlorine without draining the pool. I'm not in a position to drain the pool and if this truly is required to convert from bromine to chlorine, I'll probably just keep using bromine.
I have a 17x35 in-ground pool with a vinyl liner.