Sodium Tetraborate Pentahydrate?

[malcomtent]

Hello.

I hand-dose with bleach for my pool and am happy with that.

However, I'm a sucker for a bargain, and I saw some tablets on sale at my local supermarket containing:

1. Trichloroisocyanuric acid (well documented here and pool school, and I need to up my CYA at the moment anyway).
2. Sodium Tetraborate Pentahydrate (can't find much on this). This is ~30% of the tablet by weight

Now, I've seen chat on borates in general here and Pool school... But was wondering whether there is anything that should give me pause.

Dosage would be about 60grams per tablet.

Thanks all.

 

[mknauss]

The tablets are tricolor and borax. The borax is to raise your pH because the trichor is very acidic.

 

[zea3]

As long as you stay on top of your CYA levels so you know when to stop using the tablets everything should be fine.

 

[malcomtent]

The tablets are tricolor and borax. The borax is to raise your pH because the trichor is very acidic.

Many thanks - so long as there is no need for me to keep an eye on anything I am not already monitoring then that sounds fine (at the 50% discount). Generally these things are terrible value for the chemical content.

I was concerned I might need to monitor borate or some-such.

 

[kadavis]

Ezi Chlor-Trichlor Tetraborate | Poolwise, wonder why this isn't sold in the States

 

[Donldson]

There are several trichlor/borate tablets available in the US. ProTeam High Tech Tabs is one example.

I really have no idea why anybody would want to bother though. If you want borates then you want them added up to the proper level right away. Attempting to trickle them in by using tablets is less cost effective and any change to the water quality will be so slow that you won't even notice it.

I'm not sure about the ease of obtaining borax or boric acid in Australia as I know there are restrictions in some countries, so this could make sense there but in the US just buy the boric acid and get your level up to where you want it.

 

[kadavis]

Thanks for the info, never seen these products in my area. I understand the use of Borates to help buffer the ph but could the use of borate in the tablets actually offset the lower ph of them