How to physically add chlorine? Looking for ideas

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Y

Yev

0
Jul 29, 2014
558
Independence, KY
Before I ask my question, I am ware of SWC, the liquidator and Stenner. At this point I don't have them, and don't have the money for one. But the point is that they are not the answer to my question.

Background of my problem: My pool is in direct sunlight the entire day, and as a result, I have to add about 48 ounces of bleach per day. When I add the bleach, I will dip a 5 gallon bucket into my pool, and fill it with about 4 gallons water. I will then take about 16 ounces of bleach, mix it in, and then pour the mixture slowly into my vinyl lined pool near a return. Because I am paranoid about the liner, I will fill my bucket with water from the pool, dump it quickly into my pool and repeat once or twice. In my mind this is helping to stir up the bleach quickly. Since I have just put in 16 ounces of bleach, I then repeat this step 2 more times to get to my 48 ounces. None of this is a big deal for me. Takes me about 10 minutes, and lifting the water is no big deal. My water is crystal clear, numbers are good, no issues.

Now my problem is that my wife has a bad back, and I don't want her picking up buckets of water that weigh 30-40 pounds. Does anyone have a clever way of adding bleach to a pool manually that does not require lifting much weight, and that will deal with my paranoid issues about bleaching my liner?
 
I just use a 32 ounce measuring cup like this: OXO Angled Measuring Cup 4-c. : Target

and pour slowly in front of the return with the pump running, as far out as I can comfortably reach and close to the water surface. I can see the chlorine going in and immediately being shot forward and mixed forward; I doubt much concentration is getting to the wall itself. It pours smoothly with no splashing etc.

Disclaimer: I have an old plaster pool that needs to be refinished at some point anyway, so am not too concerned about the surface, but I really don't see the need to do all that work to mix and dilute before putting it in the pool.

If I was being really paranoid and really clever/silly, I'd rig up a funnel with a plastic tube, with a 2x4 or something to hold the tube end 4-5 feet away from the wall...
 
I would just set the bottle partially in the water and slowly pour about 1/3 of the bottle in front of a return jet.

I would suggest you take one of the empty bottles and measure the volumes and mark the 1/3 lines so you get a feel for where it is on the bottle.
 
I was under the impression you don't need to dilute it. just pour it in over the return and if you worrie just pour slower. if you are really concerned take a brush and sweep underneath where you poured to get rid of "hot-spots" in case it didn't mix when you first poured it. if you do it that way it should take you 30 seconds and no need to pick anything heavy up.

I'm in the middle of a SLAM so my wife went outside (since I'm at work) with a 16 month old and my 6 year old neice and tested and added 61oz (super sunny 92 degree day here) while she was on the phone with me and it took her about 2 minutes. So it can be done.

I was also under the impression that if you add the correct amount of bleach to keep a good target FC you shouldn't need to worry about bleaching your liner. was i wrong?
 
no risk of bleaching your liner by just pouring bleach in. you would need a lot of direct contact time for it to bleach out and that's not going to happen. remember, you are pouring the bleach into a giant volume of water. you are diluting by just pouring in.

make it easy on your self and just pour. and no need to measure it exactly with a measuring cup, just figure out roughly how much of the bottle. in your case, about 1/3.
 
I pour as fast as it will come out of the bottle without gurgling right in front of the return. Been doing it that way for 3 years without issue. Pour it slower than I do if you want extra peace of mind. I always point my return eyeball slightly upward before pouring so I know where the stream is, but not upward enough that there is any splashing. After adding, I set the eye back to it's original position.
 

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Pour slowly over a return flow and there should be no problem. If you are concerned that you missed that flow and some concentrated chlorine fell to the bottom of the pool, you can just lightly brush the side and bottom of the pool to ensure thorough mixing.

Low pH is much more damaging to vinyl liners than chlorine, especially chlorinating liquid or bleach that being higher in pH is not high in hypochlorous acid (until diluted so that the pH drops). It's Trichlor that is the most damaging due to the combination of low pH and high chlorine levels. Muriatic Acid is bad as well with its low pH if it pools at the bottom of the pool (i.e. if not well mixed). Yes, if you were to get Cal-Hypo to sit on the bottom then eventually that would be a problem as well though would take longer than Trichlor. Again, for any concentrated chemical, pouring slowly over a return flow is safe and easy and then brushing the side and bottom to ensure thorough mixing makes sure no damage could possibly occur.
 
smracing said:
I know people say not to, but I slowly pour my chemicals in to the skimmer. I've been doing it this way for 15 years. (I have had a Stenner for the chlorine for the last two years, but still add muriatic acid to the skimmer)
Click to expand...
So readers understand, this is not recommended by TFP as it can damage equipment.
 
smracing said:
I know people say not to, but I slowly pour my chemicals in to the skimmer. I've been doing it this way for 15 years. (I have had a Stenner for the chlorine for the last two years, but still add muriatic acid to the skimmer)
Click to expand...

For Muriatic Acid in particular this is a no-no because the dilution rate is simply not enough to have the pH be reasonable (for chlorine it's not so bad but we still recommend to use a return). pH is a logarithmic scale and full-strength Muriatic Acid starts at a pH of -1 (yes, pH can go negative) and only increases by 1 unit for every factor of 10 of water dilution (at least until one gets closer to not exhausting the TA buffer so roughly at a 1 in 5000 dilution). So let's assume that the flow rate through the skimmer is 20 GPM (it might be more like 15 GPM depending on pump speed, number of suction skimmers and floor drains, etc.). The following gives the required speed of addition for each pH:

pH ... Addition Rate
-1 .... 20 gallons per minute or 5.3 cups per second (technically this would be a pH of -0.7 for a 50/50 dilution)
0 ...... 0.53 cups (4.2 fluid ounces) per second -- a moderately fast pour
1 ...... 0.43 fluid ounces (2.6 teaspoons) per second -- the most likely rate of slow pouring
2 ...... 0.26 (1/4) teaspoon per second -- a very slow dribble pour
3 ...... 0.026 (1/39th) teaspoons per second (pH only this low if TA < 50 ppm; at TA of 80 ppm, pH is 6.0)

So I don't care how slowly you pour into the skimmer (within reason), the pH of the resulting water is going to be quite low and the more slowly you pour the longer the exposure time though it's worse to have it be lower in pH even for a short time due to non-linear pH effects on metal corrosion.

Even pouring slowly over a return flow has some of the same issues regarding dilution, BUT the big difference is that the water in the return stream is not kept constrained in a pipe but disperses into a much larger body of water for additional dilution. So in addition to the slow addition dilution effect that might get one near a pH of 1 depending on how slowly one pours, the spreading of the return flow water into the bulk water dilutes by additional orders of magnitude to get to higher pH. Once the amount of dilution no longer exhausts the TA buffer, the pH snaps up into the 6's. For a 2 cup addition of full-strength Muriatic Acid and a TA of 80 ppm the TA exhaustion threshold occurs when diluted into around 800 gallons where diluting into 1200 gallons the pH is snapped up to 6.0.

There have been reports of pump seal and copper heat exchanger damage from Trichlor pucks in the skimmer and (separate reports) from acid being added to the skimmer. It would also be a particular problem for those with cartridge filters. Just because someone doesn't have a problem in their particular pool does not mean it is not a risk. It depends on the frequency of acid addition and the quality of the equipment. For a copper heat exchanger in a gas heater, the first symptom would be stripping some of the copper so adding copper ions in the water with the possible result of getting metal staining in a plaster pool. See this post from a chlorinator manufacturer that did tests showing that pouring a lot of acid quickly in the skimmer, such as 1 liter per second over 20 seconds, damaged the pump stainless steel shaft and pump seals, but that was ONE addition. In that same post it is said that slower additions should not be a problem because of dilution but that is inconsistent with some long-term reports we get, such as those with Trichlor in the skimmer.
 
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