Broken in-line chlorinator - trichlor inside

[michiele]

When the pool guy came out to open the pool last week, he stuffed our inline chlorinator full of trichlor, turned it on to full and left. Since this is our first summer with this older pool, I figured I would let the trichlor run its course and then take over with the bleach, since the CYA is low anyway (20ppm). However, I was suspcious that the inline chlorinator was not working since my chlorine levels were really low. So, I opened up the thing, after about 5 days and it was still stuffed full of trichlor sticks. I don't think it is working. My question would be, "What is the safest way to get those sticks out of the chlorinator? The fumes were really bad when I opened last time. Any suggestions?

Also, since I need to bring up my CYA and I have left over sticks anyway, can I just put those in a floating chlorinator? How much CYA will I get from each stick? Thanks.

 

[CaOCl2]

Funny you should ask, there was the same question on dichlor a few minutes ago.

I'll go metric on you for two seconds: Let's assume a 250 gram trichor tablet and a 10000 liter pool. Trichlor is 54.2% CYA and 91.6% chlorine. One tablet dissolved in that pool yields:


(250 * 0.542) / (10000 / 1000) = 13.55 ppm CYA

and

(250 * 0.916) / (10000 / 1000) = 22.9 ppm chlorine


I think the math is right, I'll let others correct me if I'm wrong.

 

[JasonLion]

I would open it up, go away for 15 minutes, come back and take them out wearing latex gloves. Any fumes will be gone in 15 minutes, probably much sooner than that.

 

[duraleigh]

"Trichlor is 54.2% CYA and 91.6% chlorine."

Chemistry escapes me but I think there's a typo in the above.

 

[CaOCl2]

Actually it's 54.2% stabilizer and 45.8% chlorine. I multiplied the chlorine content by two, as it's the convention.