Non-Chlorine "Shock"

[LBTRS]

Hello,

Went to the Leslie's today to buy some liquid chlorine to "shock" the pool since it has not been shocked since opening it a little over a month ago. Our pool builder said to use the super chlorinate feature on our SWG once a month for general pool maintenance. The person at Leslie's advised against liquid chlorine as it would raise my salt level each time I used it and said I should be using the super chlorinate feature on the SWG weekly and using a non-chlorine shock weekly or he'll "have to later sell me a bunch of stuff to solve a problem".

My question is...is this non-chlorine shock ok to use? He sold me something called Fresh 'n Clear and said to use 1.5 lbs weekly on my 15k gallon pool. My goal is to not have to use the super chlorinate feature on the SWG or dump a bunch of chlorine in right now as we use the pool daily and I'm told it will take a couple of days for the chlorine to return to swimable levels.

I like the idea of being able to use this non-chlroine shock so we can continue to swim every day. Does this stuff add anything to the water that will continue to build up and cause me trouble later?

My current numbers are:

FC 4
CC 0
CYA 65
TA 90
Ph 7.5
CH 230

Thanks for any insight.

 

[duraleigh]

LB,

Liquid chlorine does not add enough salt to be of any concern. Leslie's is simply misleading you.

If the "non-chlorine" shock is monosodium persulfate, it's fine to use and will not accumulate in your pool. That said, it's quite pricey and I see no reason to blindly shock every week.....that's where testing and understanding when to shock will serve you better.

I would never use the "super-chlorinate feature. You are simply adding the same thing as liquide chlorine and prematurely wearing out your cell.

The path you are choosing to sanitize your pool is fine but you are spending quite a bit of money you don't need to.

PS - your test results are very, very nice. There is no reason to shock that pool unless your water clarity is off.

 

[JasonLion]

I just want to confirm what duraleigh is saying. There is no need to shock regularly. That advice is designed for people who ignore their pool most of the week. Keep your FC where it should be and only shock when there is a problem (which shouldn't be at all often).

 

[LBTRS]

Excellent news, thank you...

The Leslie's employee also stated that super chlorinating and shocking were not the same and people often mistake them to be the same. Around here shocking seems to be the same as super chlorinating. Is this the case or did I miss something?

 

[JasonLion]

A SWG produces chlorine slowly, while manually "shocking" adds chlorine quickly. If you are trying to kill algae they are very different. Algae keeps growing the whole time, so adding chlorine slowly, as a SWG does, will only kill a little algae while new algae is growing to replace it. Depending on the size of your SWG the algae might win that race, and even if the algae loses eventually, it will have taken far more chlorine than adding chlorine quickly would. Other than that time factor, both add chlorine and usually have the same end result (except when the algae wins the race).

But I kind of doubt that the Leslie's employee was talking about that. I suspect that he was thinking of the fact that super-chlorinate doesn't earn him money and buying "shock" products does.