So I bought a couple lbs of pure calcium hypochlorite to experiment with making my own chlorine/bleach. I followed directions to make a small batch of 6% chlorine and it seemed to work fine as the liquid smells strongly of chlorine with a yellow tint. I put a tsp of the the solution in a cup of water expecting it to have a high ppm reading of free chlorine. However I tested with my taylor kit FAS-DPD test and to my surprise it showed zero chlorine. I added a bit more of the chlorine solution to the water and still zero chlorine. I went and tested my pool water thinking maybe my kit went bad but that showed the proper chlorine level in the pool. Anyone know why I'm not getting a chlorine reading using the calcium hypochlorite solution?
Unable to get a chlorine reading with my calcium hypochlorite homemade chlorine bleach
- Thread starter PhantomF
- Start date
- May 3, 2014
- 62,730
- Pool Size
- 6000
- Surface
- Fiberglass
- Chlorine
- Salt Water Generator
- SWG Type
- Pentair Intellichlor IC-40
Do you have an OTO test (yellow comparator). Try that. You may be bleaching out the other test with very high FC.
Dissolving cal hypo in water does not make 'bleach'. Just add the cal hypo to the pool. Why take the risk of dissolving it first?
Dissolving cal hypo in water does not make 'bleach'. Just add the cal hypo to the pool. Why take the risk of dissolving it first?
My guess is it's bleaching out the powder. That would be around 1300ppm if my calculations are correct.
No unfortunately I don't have a yellow test. I'm not gonna use it to disinfect the pool but for household cleaning and safe water storage. I did another test adding 10 drops to a gallon of water which is called for proper storage and still zero chlorine result on the test. Very strange!