I normally use liquid chlorine to treat my pool. It's 72k gallons, vinyl liner and freshwater. I live in a small area and liquid chlorine is beginning to become very difficult to find and also extremely expensive. I recently came into 200lbs of cal-hypo granules for dirt cheap due to a friend switching to Salt water. My question is would I be able to mix it off in 30 gallon drums to create a sort of homemade liquid chlorine? I know pre mixing and storing probably isn't the best over long periods of time but I would only mix bare minimum at a time. If this is possible would anyone have an idea of how much to mix per gallon to result in a 12 or 13% solution. Thanks in advance.
Calcium Hypochlorite granules
- Thread starter Morganbertrand90
- Start date
Nope. Liquid chlorine is a very high pH saline solution. Trying to make cal-hypo in to 12% would just burn off quickly and if the drums are metal they will probably rust out almost as fast.
Ok thank you. They are black poly drums. Just wishful thinking instead of mixing off the bags one pound at a time.
Deb04
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- Jul 12, 2008
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Don’t mix the bags. Broadcast them across the pool, one at a time As needed.
keep an eye on your CH to make sure it doesn’t get crazy high.
keep an eye on your CH to make sure it doesn’t get crazy high.
How sure are you of the gallons? Mine is 27k and doesn’t look much smaller than yours.
Pictures don't do it justice. It's 33ft wide at the widest point and 42ft long. 10 foot deep on over a quarter of the pool. The gallons came from the company that replaced the liner. It's 1,482 Sq ft of vinyl.
red-beard
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- May 27, 2019
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^^^This.
I needed to raise my CH so my first year using TFP methods, I was using Cal Hypo. It works just fine. Again, you need to watch the Calcium Hardness levels. With a vinyl pool, it is not as important.
red-beard
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- May 27, 2019
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Mine is 14.5 feet wide by 40 feet long and only goes to 8 foot depth and is 25K gallons. The picture is deceiving. Using the robot as a reference I can see it being 33 x 42. 72K gallons seems in the ball park!
Yeah it's too big in my opinion. Came with the house and got it for a good deal so the wife wouldn't let me pass it up lol. Here are some Google map pics for scale. The house is just a hair over 1900 Sq ft.
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- May 23, 2015
- 24,494
- Pool Size
- 16000
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- Chlorine
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- Pentair Intellichlor IC-60
One can make sodium hypochlorite from calcium hypochlorite but it is a royal PITA. The reaction typically has to be done in a cooled flask (ice bath) and the concentration of hypochlorite needs to be kept under 15% or else it will begin to fume chlorine gas. There will also be a huge amount of calcium carbonate precipitated out of solution that will need to be filter as the resulting mixture will be a cloudy soup. The pH typically needs adjusting with lye (sodium hydroxide) to stabilize the hypochlorite. It's really not something you can mix up in the backyard without creating a potentially hazardous situation. The chemistry is fairly simple -
Na2CO3(aq) + Ca(ClO)2(s) ---> 2 NaClO(aq) + CaCO3(s↓)
1 mole of calcium hypochlorite when added to a solution of sodium carbonate will create 2 moles of sodium hypochlorite. Typically the above reaction needs to be done with lots of stirring and then a period of settling while cooled in an ice bath. Then you filter the aqueous solution to removed suspended calcium carbonate and adjust pH to about 12.5. It's difficult to do in large batches and so creating anything in gallon sized quantities can be very dangerous.
As others have said, be safe and just broadcast the granules into the pool. Being in Louisiana it's got to be pretty easy to exchange pool water for fresh water when you need to lower CH.
Na2CO3(aq) + Ca(ClO)2(s) ---> 2 NaClO(aq) + CaCO3(s↓)
1 mole of calcium hypochlorite when added to a solution of sodium carbonate will create 2 moles of sodium hypochlorite. Typically the above reaction needs to be done with lots of stirring and then a period of settling while cooled in an ice bath. Then you filter the aqueous solution to removed suspended calcium carbonate and adjust pH to about 12.5. It's difficult to do in large batches and so creating anything in gallon sized quantities can be very dangerous.
As others have said, be safe and just broadcast the granules into the pool. Being in Louisiana it's got to be pretty easy to exchange pool water for fresh water when you need to lower CH.