Adding Calcium Chloride directly to pool

[sirenian]

Is there any real danger just casting granular calcium chloride on the surface of a pool? I've read that you need to mix it in a bucket in small batches because of the heat of solution, but I figured that was a lot of trouble with 50lbs of ice melt. I just cut open a bag of granular CaCl ice melt, and cast it out across the surface of my 40k gallon plaster pool. It seemed like it dissolved quite quickly, very little hit the bottom and only a few little chunks were left for me to break up with the brush. Did I just court disaster?

 

[nobody291]

When I've added calcium chloride (make sure you really need to, because you can't take the calcium back out of the water), I've added it in batches to the deep end like you described. I've never had to add all that much, so it dissolves very quickly. You definitely don't need to, but if you choose to use the bucket method, just be careful with the ratios, because the water in the bucket could get pretty hot. Pool school has a short section on calcium hardness in the Recommended Pool Chemicals article.