Does chlorine kill off food coloring?

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AndyTN

AndyTN

Bronze Supporter
Mar 27, 2019
463
Memphis
Pool Size
26000
Surface
Vinyl
I am dealing with a very stealthy leak in my liner which I have searched for hours with the snorkel and used up all my red food coloring bottle. As I am now very frustrated, I am now devising a contraption to go around the edge of the pool with a large amount of green in hopes I might be able to find it. Before I go crazy and accidentally dye my pool for an early St Patrick's Day, will the chlorine kill off the color? The very little I am using with the dropper gets so diluted that it doesn't matter if the FC takes care of it.

I will post a picture of my green pool if it takes that much to that to find the leak.
 
Depends on the food coloring. Some use an oil base which could cause a slick to form. If you've found one that seems to dissolve well, then using a lot will only likely cause FC demand as the chlorine oxidizes the dye. You may need to SLAM afterwards to get everything back into order but it shouldn't take too much effort.
 
I mean, the chlorine in the pool is the same as bleach, and bleach will clean up any spills I have when making my Christmas Waldorf Astoria Red Velvet Cake with green icing. So I don't know why it couldn't work the same way in a pool, as long as you account for it being used in the process! I wouldn't worry about little vials like that, though. Just if you were going to do a special St. Patrick's Day swim, or maybe dye the water red for a Jaws watch party!
 
Maybe a teensy-weensy difference in concentrations between chlorine in a bleach bottle and in pool water. I hope...
 
You will not be able to find a leak by dumping in dye.

If you have a hole in the liner, it will be visible.

Keep looking.

The only way that dye will work is if you squirt some directly into the hole.
 
SumOfOneInteger said:
You have my complete, undivided attention.
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Ha ha! It has been a family tradition for as long as I can remember.

My grandma used to make it on the 23rd of December each year, and we'd have it after dinner on Christmas Eve. Years ago, she "retired" from making it, so I took over and for the first two or three years, I made it at her house under her tutelage, learning all the little tricks.

One year, I waited too long to buy the ingredients and couldn't find the large bottles of red food coloring but they did have green. So I made a green velvet cake with red frosting (the small bottles in the box were enough for that)!
 
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superdave5599 said:
Ha ha! It has been a family tradition for as long as I can remember.

My grandma used to make it on the 23rd of December each year, and we'd have it after dinner on Christmas Eve. Years ago, she "retired" from making it, so I took over and for the first two or three years, I made it at her house under her tutelage, learning all the little tricks.

One year, I waited too long to buy the ingredients and couldn't find the large bottles of red food coloring but they did have green. So I made a green velvet cake with red frosting (the small bottles in the box were enough for that)!
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Red velvet cake is my absolute favorite cake. Thank you for sharing your story! Family traditions are awesome and I miss "helping" my grandma in the kitchen. Although, I'm fairly certain she'd have rather me not helped.

My coworker bakes as a side-hustle and she made me a red velvet cheesecake for my birthday. There is absolutely no point to this story other than I wanted to reminisce about the red velvet cheesecake.
 

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I forgot to post an update. I put 5 oz of food coloring in a 1 gallon jug of water. I added almost a pound of salt to make sure the dye sank to the floor. I used a funnel attached to a really skinny pvc pipe and slowly circled the edge of the pool while pouring in the red concoction. Did it find the leak? No but it looked really cool moving through the water and gave my 9yo son a good science experiment on how more dense liquids, like salt water, sink through the less dense liquid instead of mixing. 95% of the red liquid eventually moved to the deep end and the existing FC in the water killed off the red food coloring in 2-3 hours.

Anyway, I finally found the leak where an old hole had been patched years ago but the patch was coming loose. I must have squirted the food coloring right from the bottle 10 different times on that old patch and I have no clue why I couldn't see the red getting sucked out of the liner. I am going to guess the red saltwater would have revealed a new hole in the liner that wasn't previously patched but I probably would have identified that new hole visually before resorting to making the pool look like I was chumming for sharks.

food coloring.jpg
 
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AndyTN said:
I forgot to post an update. I put 5 oz of food coloring in a 1 gallon jug of water. I added almost a pound of salt to make sure the dye sank to the floor. I used a funnel attached to a really skinny pvc pipe and slowly circled the edge of the pool while pouring in the red concoction. Did it find the leak? No but it looked really cool moving through the water and gave my 9yo son a good science experiment on how more dense liquids, like salt water, sink through the less dense liquid instead of mixing. 95% of the red liquid eventually moved to the deep end and the existing FC in the water killed off the red food coloring in 2-3 hours.

Anyway, I finally found the leak where an old hole had been patched years ago but the patch was coming loose. I must have squirted the food coloring right from the bottle 10 different times on that old patch and I have no clue why I couldn't see the red getting sucked out of the liner. I am going to guess the red saltwater would have revealed a new hole in the liner that wasn't previously patched but I probably would have identified that new hole visually before resorting to making the pool look like I was chumming for sharks.

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It would have been really cool if you put a shark floatie in the pool with all the red ... then played the JAWS theme song in the background ...
 
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JoyfulNoise said:
It would have been really cool if you put a shark floatie in the pool with all the red ... then played the JAWS theme song in the background ...
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Seems to be a universal reaction to seeing red water: SHARK! Thought that was only my Aussie shark paranoia...
 
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mgtfp said:
Seems to be a universal reaction to seeing red water: SHARK! Thought that was only my Aussie shark paranoia...
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Talk to @Newdude … apparently the great whites off of Long Island have been enjoying their tourist snack-treats …

television snl GIF by Saturday Night Live
 
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AndyTN said:
I forgot to post an update. I put 5 oz of food coloring in a 1 gallon jug of water. I added almost a pound of salt to make sure the dye sank to the floor. I used a funnel attached to a really skinny pvc pipe and slowly circled the edge of the pool while pouring in the red concoction. Did it find the leak? No but it looked really cool moving through the water and gave my 9yo son a good science experiment on how more dense liquids, like salt water, sink through the less dense liquid instead of mixing. 95% of the red liquid eventually moved to the deep end and the existing FC in the water killed off the red food coloring in 2-3 hours.

Anyway, I finally found the leak where an old hole had been patched years ago but the patch was coming loose. I must have squirted the food coloring right from the bottle 10 different times on that old patch and I have no clue why I couldn't see the red getting sucked out of the liner. I am going to guess the red saltwater would have revealed a new hole in the liner that wasn't previously patched but I probably would have identified that new hole visually before resorting to making the pool look like I was chumming for sharks.

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Well, now I really want to try this for ***** and giggles!

I'll just tell my wife I'm looking for leaks, too.
 
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