Ditch brominator for Liquidator?

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Molson

Molson

LifeTime Supporter
Apr 15, 2008
479
Midland, Ontario
I currently have a bromine pool, since April I have used a small bucket of pucks in the brominator, approx $130.00. I know that Cl added to a bromine pool will convert to bromine. Can I safely replace the brominator with a liquidator and switch to bleach?
 
Chlorine will reactivate the bromine and all will be fine for a time. Eventually the bromine reserve will fall and you will get to a point where there isn't enough bromine to keep the pool sanitary. If you add some more bromine before you get to that point you should be fine.
 
Jason,

When you say over time the bromine reserve will fall, what exactly do you mean (in the context of an outdoor pool)? Are you talking about the active sanitizer form depleting (which is renewed with shocking, right?), or are you stating the actual bromide reservoir itself somehow leaves the water completely over time? If so how much time?

The reason I ask is that I have been thinking about adding a little bromide reserve to my pool. Since I have a nicely sized ozonator on the pool, I thought this would produce a low maintenance combination by eliminating my dosing of chlorine.

My current understanding regarding a bromide reservoir (and I did read the sticky) is that it is a semi-permanent thing, like salt or borates in your pool. Therefore you only have to replace the splash out, etc. Is this correct?

Thanks,

Lee
 
Semi-permanent is the right word. Bromine can occur in several forms in the pool. The two most important forms in this situation are active sanitizing bromine and inactive bromine held in reserve. Active bromine will react with contaminates, helping keep the pool sanitary. After it reacts it switches to the inactive form, which remains in the water and is often called the bromine reserve. Various oxidizers, including bleach, MPS, and ozone, will reactivate the inactive bromine and turn it back into the active sanitizing form.

The amount of bromine in the reserve will fall over time. This occurs both through splash out/water replacement and because of very slow reactions that break down bromine over many months or years. In a bromine pool you need to add bromine to the reserve any time there is significant water replacement and once or twice a year to counter losses due to water replacement and bromine breaking down.

Bromine does not work well in an outdoor pool. Sunlight will turn active bromine into inactive bromine fairly quickly and it becomes very difficult to maintain an effective level of sanitizer. There isn't anything that can stabilize bromine against sunlight, the way that CYA stabilizes chlorine against sunlight. Any other sanitizer added to the pool will get consumed reactivating the bromine, which will just get deactivated again by more sunlight.

Bromine is a good choice for indoor and covered spas and some indoor pools. Bromine is more stable than chlorine at the higher temperatures found in spas. However, bromine does have a "chemical" smell and a few people have annoying skin reactions.

On the surface, ozone and bromine seem like a good combination. The ozone will reactivate the bromine and there ought to be less maintenance than with ozone and chlorine. However, if it is an outdoor pool the bromine will be deactivated by sunlight too quickly and if it is an indoor pool, ozone is not normally a good choice because of air quality issues.
 
The other factor to take into consideration is that ozone will often convert the bromide in the pool into bromates, thereby depleting the "bromide bank". Also, bromates are a suspected carcinogen.

In a hot tub, with it's frequent complete water changes (most tubs are drained and refilled every 3-4 months) this is not really an issue. In a pool it can become one.
 
"....bromates are a suspected carcinogen."

Did some research on this. Appears this statement is true and the body of evidence in support of this statement is growing rapidly.

So no bromine for me..... :)

On a realted note: It concerns me that there is a manufacturer out there of ozone equipment that actually recommends the addition of sodium bromide to the pool water in conjunction with the use of their ozone and ionizer equipment.

http://www.sunshinepool.com/ozone1.html

Scroll down to the bottom of the page.

--Lee
 
learthur said:
"....bromates are a suspected carcinogen."

Did some research on this. Appears this statement is true and the body of evidence in support of this statement is growing rapidly.

So no bromine for me..... :)

On a realted note: It concerns me that there is a manufacturer out there of ozone equipment that actually recommends the addition of sodium bromide to the pool water in conjunction with the use of their ozone and ionizer equipment.

http://www.sunshinepool.com/ozone1.html

Scroll down to the bottom of the page.

--Lee
Click to expand...

There are actually several of them out there. It blows my mind as well. There used to be a bromine generator (salt system) that advocated the use of sodium bromide instead of sodium chloride. It went away because of the bromate issue several years ago when the issue of bromates in drinking water (usually contributed by unpure bleach) came up.
 

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