Is shocking your pool once a week really necessary?

[tim5055]

Interesting read on the chlorine. Do most of you use liquid bleach? I was about to buy an $80 bucket of tabs.

In it's natural state, chlorine is a gas. Many large commercial pools actually use gas injection systems to chlorinate their pools.

Now, to change chlorine into something we can use at home it needs to be bound to something to turn it into a solid. The "somethings" that are commonly used are stabilizer (also known as CYA), calcium, lithium, or --- get this water.

All of these add a little salt to your water, but they add something else.

Cal-Hypo add calcium

Tri-Chlor and Di-Chlor (tabs and most granules) add stabilizer

Lithium hypochlorite adds lithium

Liquid chlorine adds - water

Notice I said, liquid chlorine. It is available in multiple "forms", all of them are just different percentages of chlorine in the solution. We generally call anything below 8.5% "bleach" and there are other percentages up to 12%

I guess this was my long winded way of saying, use whatever liquid chlorine is most economical in your area. That may be bleach, but higher percentages sold by pool stores may work out better dollar wise.

 

[YippeeSkippy]

Along with what Marty posted above... consider installing a Salt Water Chlorine Generator (SWG). That's a device that actually *makes* chlorine out of the salt in the pool water. Salt in the water feels silkier than plain water too.

I only add bleach to the pool on few occasions when I need an *instant* boost or in the winter time when the SWG is off line.

Maddie