How to right the wrong of Jacks Magic Yellow Stuff.....

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kanesurfguru

0
Jun 8, 2012
15
North West, Pennsylvania
I just got my pool going this season about 3 weeks ago. It is a SWG 18x36 vinyl pool and was running perfeclty and producing chlorine until my pool lady recommended putting in 8oz of Jacks Magic Yellow stuff because a lot of pools in my area were getting algae, and now I can't keep chlorine in during the day. I even slammed it with a 32ppm chlorine at night and in the morning there was 31ppm chlorine, but once the sun comes out I lost all the FC by noon. How do I fix this.

These were taken at noon.
FC = 0
CC = 0
PH = 7.4
AL = 80
CH = 100
CYA = 80

The SWG is working great, it produces enough chlorine over the night to have a 5ppm FC in the morning but by noon it is all gone again. It's like I don't have any CYA but that is not the case. I know I should not have listened to the Pool lady, but I thought prevention might be OK.
Does the yellow stuff neutralize cya effectiveness?

Please help.
 
Welcome to TFP! Good to have you here :)

I'll put up the bat signal to get you a bromine expert, cause I've been working on trying to understand this myself!

Unfortunately, the pool $tore is going to mess up a lot of people with that recommendation. The product is sodium bromide, so you've converted your pool to a bromine pool. There's not many people here that can help out with it, and many people convert out of the bromine because of the hassle, but that requires a drain and refill. The bromine will leave the pool very slowly by outgassing, but that could take a while.

In the meantime, when you add chlorine, the chlorine oxidizes the bromide bank in the water, converting it to bromine. Bromine shows up on the free chlorine test, but is not protected from sunshine the way that chlorine is protected by CYA. So the bromine converts back to bromide very quickly in sunlight, ready for the next time you add chlorine. This is why people aren't very successful with bromine in an outdoor residential pool.

The good news is that you only have around 4 ppm sodium bromide from the stuff you added, so it won't take as long to go away as if you had added more.

So drain/refill is the instant fix. The slow fix is to run your pool a bit differently for a while until the bromide is gone. Add chlorine often, morning, mid-day, and at least just before swimming so the pool has bromine as a sanitizer when there are people in it. Your SWG will help with this. You will go through more chlorine until the bromide is gone. You can slightly hasten the departure of the bromide by aerating like crazy right after adding the chlorine (blower in spa, water features, lots of swimming, etc.) because the bromine only outgasses when it's in the bromine form (not the bromide that's left after the bromine becomes bromide again).

You can run at a lower sanitizer level because the bromine is not buffered by anything, in the way that chlorine is buffered by CYA. If you can keep your bromine level up to 1 or 2 ppm (the reading on the chlorine test), then the water is adequately sanitized. It is great news that you don't seem to have an algae problem!

Adding chlorine just before dark will help as well, because the bromine will have more chance to out-gas given that it is not being converted back to bromide by sunlight.

You'll sense when the bromide is depleted because your chlorine demand will return to what you're more accustomed to.

Now hopefully someone more knowledgeable than me will come along and clarify anything I've said that's wrong, misleading or unclear!
 
It looks like the Jack's yellow does consume chlorine based on the warning not to swim until chlorine levels return to normal. Very unlikely that it impacts CYA.

Edit: needsajet is right, that product is 98% sodium bromide. Terrible that they label that as an algaecide.
 
pooldv said:
It looks like the Jack's yellow does consume chlorine based on the warning not to swim until chlorine levels return to normal. Very unlikely that it impacts CYA.

Edit: needsajet is right, that product is 98% sodium bromide. Terrible that they label that as an algaecide.
Click to expand...

Thank you for your quick response, does anyone know how long it will take to get rid of the bromide out of the pool if I put chlorine in morning noon and night?. Thanks again.
 
needsajet said:
Welcome to TFP! Good to have you here :)

I'll put up the bat signal to get you a bromine expert, cause I've been working on trying to understand this myself!

Unfortunately, the pool $tore is going to mess up a lot of people with that recommendation. The product is sodium bromide, so you've converted your pool to a bromine pool. There's not many people here that can help out with it, and many people convert out of the bromine because of the hassle, but that requires a drain and refill. The bromine will leave the pool very slowly by outgassing, but that could take a while.

In the meantime, when you add chlorine, the chlorine oxidizes the bromide bank in the water, converting it to bromine. Bromine shows up on the free chlorine test, but is not protected from sunshine the way that chlorine is protected by CYA. So the bromine converts back to bromide very quickly in sunlight, ready for the next time you add chlorine. This is why people aren't very successful with bromine in an outdoor residential pool.

The good news is that you only have around 4 ppm sodium bromide from the stuff you added, so it won't take as long to go away as if you had added more.

So drain/refill is the instant fix. The slow fix is to run your pool a bit differently for a while until the bromide is gone. Add chlorine often, morning, mid-day, and at least just before swimming so the pool has bromine as a sanitizer when there are people in it. Your SWG will help with this. You will go through more chlorine until the bromide is gone. You can slightly hasten the departure of the bromide by aerating like crazy right after adding the chlorine (blower in spa, water features, lots of swimming, etc.) because the bromine only outgasses when it's in the bromine form (not the bromide that's left after the bromine becomes bromide again).

You can run at a lower sanitizer level because the bromine is not buffered by anything, in the way that chlorine is buffered by CYA. If you can keep your bromine level up to 1 or 2 ppm (the reading on the chlorine test), then the water is adequately sanitized. It is great news that you don't seem to have an algae problem!

Adding chlorine just before dark will help as well, because the bromine will have more chance to out-gas given that it is not being converted back to bromide by sunlight.

You'll sense when the bromide is depleted because your chlorine demand will return to what you're more accustomed to.

Now hopefully someone more knowledgeable than me will come along and clarify anything I've said that's wrong, misleading or unclear!
Click to expand...

Thank you for your quick response, does anyone know how long it will take to get rid of the bromide out of the pool if I put chlorine in morning noon and night?. Thanks again.
 
I got some additional info from one of our chemistry experts. He felt that out-gassing won't help much, and the bromide bank will only be lost by dilution, splashout and backwash, so it will be slow. That said, using your SWG to provide the oxidizer (chlorine) will maintain a suitable bromine level for sanitation. So in the meantime, run the pump and SWG when there's sun on the pool. When your test reading starts to rise higher that will be the cue that the bromide bank is getting depleted.

I'm not sure which test kit you have (maybe add it to your signature). Let's say you test for FC and see 2 ppm FC. The Taylor chemistry detects either free chlorine or bromine the same way, with the difference being that the reading of 2 ppm FC is 4.5 ppm bromine. The strength of the sanitizer is not buffered the way that CYA buffers FC, so lower numbers will be effective sanitation. So if you run the SWG enough to get a reading of 1 to 2 ppm FC, you actually have 2 to 4 ppm bromine, and that's plenty.

You can also search around the TFP forums to learn more about bromine. The active sanitizer is actually hypobromous acid, so you'll notice that as you learn more.

I'm above my pay grade when it comes to talking about bromine, so I'll continue to look for others who can help as well. Anyone else following along, if you know how long this might take, it would be helpful for kanesurfguru to know. Also anything about effective bromine levels would be helpful.

When you get a minute, add your location to your profile so we know a bit about your climate.

I feel for you and wish I could be more precise.
 
Wow, that is some expensive water! I think you could fill it with bottled water for that kinda money. :) Most folks pay a couple of hundred bucks or less to fill their pools.
 
pooldv said:
Wow, that is some expensive water! I think you could fill it with bottled water for that kinda money. :) Most folks pay a couple of hundred bucks or less to fill their pools.
Click to expand...

I'm sure they do, but we can't fill our pool with tap water not allowed. And a 2,000 gal water truck cost $500 per load and we need 20,000 + gals. Not cheap here. I wish it was. I'd refill and be done.
 

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That's a shame :(

So hey, are you running your SWG during sunlight? Is it working OK?

We see a few of these so it's heaps helpful to get feedback and learn for the next person. No pressure, and even once a week would be great to hear.
 
needsajet said:
That's a shame :(

So hey, are you running your SWG during sunlight? Is it working OK?

We see a few of these so it's heaps helpful to get feedback and learn for the next person. No pressure, and even once a week would be great to hear.
Click to expand...

Yes, I'm running the SWG all day, but by 2pm I'm out of FC on the test strips, so I'm adding a half gallon of bleach, it usually gives me enough FC until 6pm an then about 8pm I put in another half gallon of bleach and by morning I'm showing about 10ppm FC and it lasts until about 2pm and I start all over again. It's hard to believe one cup of Jack's magic yellow stuff could screw up a 23,000 gallon pool, but it did.
 
It's quite possible that the test strips are not giving you a reliable number. The FAS-DPD test in the TF100 is reliable, and that will be important when maintaining your FC between 1 and 2 ppm (2.2 to 4.5 ppm bromine). I've read some threads here where people found that the OTO test (the yellow one) was fine for monitoring bromine in this situation. Just some food for thought; it must be a pain fitting this all into the rest of your life!
 
needsajet said:
It's quite possible that the test strips are not giving you a reliable number. The FAS-DPD test in the TF100 is reliable, and that will be important when maintaining your FC between 1 and 2 ppm (2.2 to 4.5 ppm bromine). I've read some threads here where people found that the OTO test (the yellow one) was fine for monitoring bromine in this situation. Just some food for thought; it must be a pain fitting this all into the rest of your life!
Click to expand...

Thanks needsajet, but I have been using the FAS-DPD test also, not every time, but still get nothing at 2pm and that is with my SWG running 24hr. And adding bleach. I really can't believe someone hasn't invented something that would take bromide out of the water. I think that would be a million dollar idea?
 
kanesurfguru said:
I really can't believe someone hasn't invented something that would take bromide out of the water. I think that would be a million dollar idea?
Click to expand...
Trillion dollar idea. It's called desalinization. Unfortunately they are a bit more concerned with stuff like turning ocean water in to drinking water and watering crops than fixing swimming pool oopsies.
 
Holy cow!

I bought a container of this stuff during an emergency mustard algae outbreak (selling a home with a pool)
but I never cracked it open and used it.

SO GLAD I DIDNT!

I was planning on putting it on ebay, but I just looked and it is sodium bromide.
well, I'm just going to eat the 20 bucks it cost me and dispose of it at the
proper facility.

not going to make someone else suffer.
 
borjis said:
Holy cow!

I bought a container of this stuff during an emergency mustard algae outbreak (selling a home with a pool)
but I never cracked it open and used it.

SO GLAD I DIDNT!

I was planning on putting it on ebay, but I just looked and it is sodium bromide.
well, I'm just going to eat the 20 bucks it cost me and dispose of it at the
proper facility.

not going to make someone else suffer.
Click to expand...

At least I was able to help someone make a good decision.
 
Makes ya wonder if a still could ever work. It's a total bummer and please understand we all feel for you, mate. Many experts here feel the product should NOT be allowed with it's current labeling.

Do any of the smarter people here think a T-15 cell would produce enough oxidiser? The pool kinda needs it anyway. Just thinking outside the box with not enough knowledge!
 

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