Gday HowsItGoin?

[JustLooking]

:blah:

Okay...I admit I have been in this industry all of my working life and worked in about 4-5 countries...lost count somewhere. Been flown all over the world on different jobs.

Kind of over the repackaging of old technologies as something new simply as the internet enables mass marketing of products previously not sustainable.

However now and then a product appears which may in fact be new. I have a product like this right now I want to research, so thought this may be a good place to get real world feedback. The products I am talking about are Pooltec, Scaletec and Beautec. Not so worried about the others in the range.

Anyway as I said I am after real world experiences, not so much a beat up or a boost up on the products just simple statements of facts. For example added this product and noted chemical consumption decreased immediately or noted the scaletec reacted with the stabiliser or ...?????????

 

[Patrick_B]

Welcome to the forum. Be sure to check out the pool rules section and see what it says about industry members. Not implying you have bad intentions, but you might want to see what they say to keep yourself out of trouble. I'm not familiar with the products you mention, but what we are about here is putting things in our pools that have minimal side effects, and nothing that isn't necessary. I bet you will learn something hanging out here even as long as you've been in the business. Hope you do, and enjoy the forum.

 

[chem geek]

Are you talking about the EasyCare products? PoolTec® and Algatec® are algaecides and list 30% Polyquat in their ingredients plus other proprietary ingredients. Most of the over 50,000 members of this forum and probably most of the over half a million unique visitors to this site per month during the summer season keep their pools algae-free by maintaining the appropriate Free Chlorine (FC) level relative to the Cyanuric Acid (CYA) level as shown in the Chlorine / CYA Chart. There is no need for algaecide, phosphate remover, clarifiers, flocculants, enzymes or even weekly shocking.

The few times where algaecide is recommended are when the chlorine level is intentionally brought down to zero as with the ascorbic acid treatment for metal stain removal. In these situations, Polyquat 60 is recommended because it has the least amount of side effects, is non-foaming, and acts as both an algaecide and a mild clarifier. Since you do not list your proprietary ingredients, we cannot readily evaluate them for known problems -- such as linear quats that can foam or chemicals with ammonium that would increase chlorine demand.

Beautec® and Pooltec® are scale inhibitors and stain preventers/removers. We have relatively few pools that develop scale after proper management of water chemistry including lowering the TA and managing the pH. For metal sequestrants, HEDP-based sequestrants have been more effective at binding to metals and are more resistant to breakdown from chlorine. If your products can be shown to be superior in these two areas, then that would be reasonable. Your paper on phosphates, however, implies that phosphates are a problem, but again when the proper FC/CYA level is maintained, then phosphates become irrelevant. I've had over 3000 ppb phosphate in my pool and others have 5000 and we have one user with tens of thousands of ppb phosphate yet algae is prevented through chlorine alone. Basically, algae growth becomes limited by sunlight and temperature regardless of nutrient level. Also, in spite of your Phosphates Facts and Myths document, my water supply in California just north of San Francisco has 400 ppb phosphates for corrosion control. It is true, however, that the highest phosphate levels tend to be introduced from use of phosphate-based metal sequestrants, but most pools don't use those since we only add what is minimally needed to our pools.

 

[JustLooking]

however, implies that phosphates are a problem, but again when the proper FC/CYA level is maintained, then phosphates become irrelevant. I've had over 3000 ppb phosphate in my pool and others have 5000 and we have one user with tens of thousands of ppb phosphate yet algae is prevented through chlorine alone. Basically, algae growth becomes limited by sunlight and temperature regardless of nutrient level. Also, in spite of your Phosphates Facts and Myths document, my water supply in California just north of San Francisco has 400 ppb phosphates for corrosion control. It is true, however, that the highest phosphate levels tend to be introduced from use of phosphate-based metal sequestrants, but most pools don't use those since we only add what is minimally needed to our pools.

Oh go on...Phosphates are a huge problem just like they have been for the last 100 years of pool chemistry. No one ever held a pool clear before lathium carbonate was invented did they?

More seriously. I think it may depend on the environmental factors. In one of the countries I worked in a pool would go a nive icky dark green once TDS reached 1200 mg/l, yet in another the pool TDS would be 10,000 mg/l with no adverse reaction. Difference was one country was a sub tropical rainforest and other was a desert region. After some thought I suspect the difference may indeed be phosphates. I suspect in the first country with the heavy vegetation and rain there may be more phosphates present and this is what we were reading in the TDS. In the second country we dont have this issue so TDS is not primarily made of phosphate waste products. Unfortunately I had left the first country many years before the invention of phosphate as an issue and I never considered it as a possible cause at the time, so cant prove or disprove my thoughts.

 

[JustLooking]

Are you talking about the EasyCare products? PoolTec® and Algatec® are algaecides and list 30% Polyquat in their ingredients plus other proprietary ingredients. Most of the over 50,000 members of this forum and probably most of the over half a million unique visitors to this site per month during the summer season keep their pools algae-free by maintaining the appropriate Free Chlorine (FC) level relative to the Cyanuric Acid (CYA) level as shown in the Chlorine / CYA Chart. There is no need for algaecide, phosphate remover, clarifiers, flocculants, enzymes or even weekly shocking.

The few times where algaecide is recommended are when the chlorine level is intentionally brought down to zero as with the ascorbic acid treatment for metal stain removal. In these situations, Polyquat 60 is recommended because it has the least amount of side effects, is non-foaming, and acts as both an algaecide and a mild clarifier. Since you do not list your proprietary ingredients, we cannot readily evaluate them for known problems -- such as linear quats that can foam or chemicals with ammonium that would increase chlorine demand.

Beautec® and Pooltec® are scale inhibitors and stain preventers/removers. We have relatively few pools that develop scale after proper management of water chemistry including lowering the TA and managing the pH. For metal sequestrants, HEDP-based sequestrants have been more effective at binding to metals and are more resistant to breakdown from chlorine. If your products can be shown to be superior in these two areas, then that would be reasonable. Your paper on phosphates, however, implies that phosphates are a problem, but again when the proper FC/CYA level is maintained, then phosphates become irrelevant. I've had over 3000 ppb phosphate in my pool and others have 5000 and we have one user with tens of thousands of ppb phosphate yet algae is prevented through chlorine alone. Basically, algae growth becomes limited by sunlight and temperature regardless of nutrient level. Also, in spite of your Phosphates Facts and Myths document, my water supply in California just north of San Francisco has 400 ppb phosphates for corrosion control. It is true, however, that the highest phosphate levels tend to be introduced from use of phosphate-based metal sequestrants, but most pools don't use those since we only add what is minimally needed to our pools.

The product makes many claims that are of interest to me specifically. I manage a few pools and include chemical supply in the offer. One of the claims is an increase chlorine efficacy and decreased chlorine demand. This would be great if true as it will reduce my costs even further than I already have.

I do understand cyanuric and TA and CH and so on and in fact manipulate them to create a zero demand acid environment however I cannot reduce chlorine consumption other than restrict bathers. I already run an algaecdie as part of teh treatment system as unfortunately the nature of pool circulation once the volumes get above a million litres often means there are areas where there is insufficent circulation to avoid algae growth regardless of chlorine levels. So this algaecide may be of interest to me.

 

[CUTiger78]

I love the capes those jugs are wearing!

 

[chem geek]

Oh go on...Phosphates are a huge problem just like they have been for the last 100 years of pool chemistry. No one ever held a pool clear before lathium carbonate was invented did they?

As you point out, people did have clear pools before lanthanum carbonate or lanthanum chloride was invented. However, in the early days, Cyanuric Acid wasn't used so the active chlorine level was not only high enough to prevent algae growth, but was really too strong so faded swimsuits and oxidized skin and hair faster, just as with some of today's indoor commercial/public pools that don't use CYA. Once stabilized chlorine was introduced, it was overused and pools started getting algae, especially later in the swim season in residential pools.

As for environmental factors, that isn't it, and it's not TDS either. It's CYA. The thing is that often when CYA got high, the TDS got high as well since it just represented longer pool chlorine use, but TDS itself is not a problem and most of TDS is salt. It's what else that TDS is composed of that is important. CYA is critically important because it significantly lowers the active chlorine level that kills algae. The FC/CYA ratio is proportional to the active chlorine level which is why one needs to increase the FC level when the CYA level rises. Now of course, just because the CYA is high or more accurately the FC/CYA ratio too low doesn't mean there will be algae because one might be lucky and have the water be poor in algae nutrients (phosphate or nitrate).

I can assure you that phosphates and nitrates are necessary conditions for algae growth, but that algae growth can be prevented by chlorine alone regardless of phosphate or nitrate levels. So phosphates are a problem in pools only when one doesn't understand the FC/CYA relationship. FC alone means nothing so if you weren't monitoring the CYA level and the FC/CYA ratio in the pools you looked at, you can't draw any conclusions about whether phosphates are a problem that can't be solved with a sufficient FC/CYA ratio.

As for chlorine demand, in low bather load pools such as most residential pools the chlorine demand is from sunlight. In moderate to high bather load pools, the dominant chlorine demand is from bathers. Assuming the sufficient FC/CYA level is maintained, then there is no algae growth so algaecide will not reduce chlorine demand unless you were to also lower the FC/CYA ratio since chlorine loss from sunlight is proportional to the FC level. So for low bather load pools, you can use an algaecide to lower the chlorine level and therefore chlorine loss, but the algaecide is almost always more expensive than the chlorine you will be saving. For higher bather load pools, you get no savings from the chlorine used to oxidize bather waste since algaecide doesn't change that at all.

The reason they make the claims they do is that they are comparing against pools that are not properly maintained. You do make a good point about poor circulation, however. If the chlorine doesn't circulate to those areas yet the chlorine gets depleted, usually from sunlight, then that can be a problem and an algaecide can help. You have many different choices for algaecides, but none are completely foolproof. We recommend Polyquat 60 because it is non-foaming and it doesn't break down too quickly from chlorine, though does need to be added weekly.

If your chlorine demand is mainly driven from bathers, then the only way to reduce that is with supplemental oxidation such as ozone or non-chlorine shock (MPS) or by the use of enzymes. However, all of these will be more costly than chlorine except possibly a commercial grade ozonator if the bather load is high. If you are talking about commercial/public pools with sand filters, then you might have biofilms in those filters and that can cause particularly high chlorine demand. You can use a filter cleaning product such as Multizyme or a biofilm inhibitor in the pool water such as Aquafinesse or even sphagnum moss. You can tell if you have such excess demand if your chlorine usage in high bather load pools is more than 4 grams of chlorine (as ppm Cl₂) per person-hour.

 

[JustLooking]

As I suspected after a bit more research...nothing new. Polyquat60 is sold here as benzalkonium chloride. Most common algaecide we have been using since 1990 that I recall and maybe before then.

The claim of decreased chlorine consumption is most likely dubious. The other name for Benzal is quatenary ammonia. As the name implies contains ammonia. Ammonia combines with chlorine etc, etc. In fact under our Health Department rules technically I am not supposed to add this product to pools as it can create a public health issue (they think).

 

[chem geek]

Benzalkonium chloride is not the same thing and is also known as alkyldimethylbenzylammonium chloride (ADBAC) and is what is known as a linear quat. It is cheaper than Polyquat, but it breaks down faster from chlorine (so has a higher chlorine demand) and it can foam. What we talk about for Polyquat 60 is a 60% concentration of the ingredient Poly [ oxyethylene(dimethyliminio) ethylene(dimethyliminio)ethylene dichloride ] aka POD. So check again the ingredients. Oftentimes, algaecide that says "50" is ADBAC that you referred to while "60" is the POD that I am talking about. When it breaks down from chlorine, it mostly just breaks up the polymer into smaller pieces that are still partially effective. It is also a mild clarifier so will also get caught in the filter if the pool is dirty.

Both ADBAC and POD are quatenary ammonium compounds, but that is not the same thing as an ammonia compound. Ammonium chloride (NH₄Cl) is like ammonia (NH₃) and would form chloramines when reacting with chlorine -- producing monochloramine almost immediately. That is not the same thing as a quatenary ammonium compound in spite of the "ammonium chloride" in the name. I think your Health Department is confusing the two different classes of compounds.

 

[DebbieO]

I must admit that I don't understand any of the chemistry language. What I DO understand is that my water has never been better since I started with the TFP methods and my TF100 kit. My water was polluted by the pool store advice and products. Thankfully I found TFP before it ever swamped out.