Ouch! I had to buy some ph minus last night.......and I'm thankful I bought a huge bucket of clorine last year! Jeeze......the 1 gallon size pail of powder was $25 at the cheapest place in town! :shock: I'll bet the fact oil is closing at over $60 per barrel has a lot to do with it. :af: It seems were getting gouged for everything lately, unless we're buying some cheap piece of crap at-wal mart that was made in China! :rant:
Powder is ALWAYS more expensive than liquid, and with the popularity of pools skyrocketing, it doesnt surprise me that the price of powder is going up. Its a premium product. Check the price of liquid, thats a good indicator. I worked in a pool store as a sales (not pool sales, chemical sales), repair, care guy... although it was two years ago, I still remember a thing or two. Wanna have fun with your friend that has a pool? Buy some Baquacil (its expensive) and pour some in his chlorine pool... watch the fun ensue. NEVER do that in your own pool, though!!!! :laugh:
OK.........I'm dying to find out so I'll ask.......what happens, does the water turn purple or something?? :laugh:
We have been using the 70# bucket of granular from Sam's Club. Saves a lot of trips to the pool store feeding a 20 X 40 hole in the ground.
Worse, you get this foam - but not regular foam, thick, nasty, goopy foam that is almost impossible to get out. We've actually had people drain their pool, scrub it, fill it part way and start to chlorinate it, only to find that the baquacil wasn't completely off of the liner, and have to empty and fill it again!!! Its great :grin: There is a chemical that gets rid of it (neutrilizes the chlorine so stops the progression, its a common pool chemical but I cant think of what it is off the top of my head) quick enough for you to be able to skim the foam off the top of the water, but what fun is that? The pool store I worked in was great, too, because there was only 3 of us that ever worked there, so we were all friends, and we all got to do EVERYTHING, instead of just being some counter jockey at a chain. Locally owned, too, which was great. I ended up finishing college and getting a real job and the store moved about 40 minutes south the year after that. Buidling it was in was falling apart. There was an indoor pool there, though, that we used Chlorine in. I havent quite been the same since I worked in that store uzzled: :laugh:
If you want to be safe, don't use chlorine. I got rid of that system many years ago. All I use here in FL is H202 (hydrogen peroxide) and algacide. Works great! No blurry eyes from chlorine, no bleach smell, no bleached hair or swimwear! I buy a 55 gallon drum, 35% concentration, for about $300 and it lasts all year. My average use is about 1 gallon per week. I get the algacide at Home Depot and it runs about $10/qt. I use 1 qt per month during swim season (Mar-Oct). Problem with chlorine here in FL is Cl is a gas and will readily evaporate in our 90+ summer days.
Yes, in warmer temperatures Chlorine sucks, but as far as burning your eyes, bleaching your hair, if the levels are kept right and closely watched, that doesnt happen. Problem is, closely watching it is a pain, a HUGE pain. Like, checking it twice a day kind of pain. The pool in the store never burned anyones eyes or bleached anyones hair, but we had a lot of time to keep very close watch on it. Hydrogen Peroxide is the base agent in Baquacil (that nifty stuff you can add Chlorine to to make funny stuff) but I can't remember if its the H2o2 that causes the reaction or something else. Glad you got the h2o2 stuff to work for you, doesn't work quite as well up here and its hard for people in NY to get 55 gallon drums of anything. 300/yr is quite a bit cheaper than Baquacil, and around the price of Chlorine/year if you buy the 5 gallon jugs of it... at least, the cost 2 years ago.
You can make chlorine with some salt and electricity: Pass electricity through a saltwater solution (brine) and this solution will separate into chlorine, sodium hydroxide (Caustic soda) and hydrogen. (electricity) 2NaCl + 2H2O Cl2 + 2NaOH + H2 (electricity) Salt + Water Chlorine + Caustic soda + Hydrogen You can use the liberated caustic for a drain cleaner and the hydrogen for a fuel cell or to inflate a model of the Hindenberg? I am pretty sure that I have seen chlorine generators sold for pool care.
