73% Calcium Hypochlorite pellets in automatic feeder

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pandrews1

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Aug 22, 2015
22
Prospect Heights, IL
Hello Group,

While we love our pool on the weekends and days I am home, I often travel during the week. This makes it challenging to keep up with liquid bleach chlorination everyday. I do have a Rainbow Automatic chlorinator but I don't want to use the pucks since my CYA is already at 50 ppm. While looking for an alternative, I thought about using the Calcium Hypochlorite pellets I have for my well. They are 74% available chlorine and are claimed to be unstabilized. This would raise my current CH of 230 upward but I have headroom for that value to rise.

Any thoughts on using this with my existing Rainbow 300 for short term sanitization?

Paul
 
Paul,

The rainbow line of feeders are designed to use 3" pucks. Filling it with any other chlorine product is not going ot work because they will not have the same dissolving characteristics. My guess is that they would dissolve much too fast, but that is just a guess.

The second, and maybe more important reason not to use the feeder like this is the fact that mixing chlorine products in an enclosed space is extremely dangerous, even explosive.

Pool Chemical Explosion Accident Analysis and Investigation at chemaxx.com

I would look at converting to either a salt water chlorine generator or an automated liquid chlorine dispenser like a Stenner pump.
 
If your set on doing this, you could consider buying a new floating dispenser. Never put calhypo in something that once held trichlor!

How welll it will work is anyone's guess. Try it out when you're home so you can check. You'll probably have to have it nearly closed and even then it will probably dissolve fast. If you could rig something up in the floater to slow the dissolution rate even more, you could probably make it work.

As someone else mentioned, a salt generator sound like it would be ideal for you. It works out to about the same cost as liquid chlorine over time, though the cost is mostly all up front.
 
I agree. Never said I was mixing. Just that I don't want to use something that raises CYA.

Certainly a fair warning since I did not say was not mixing either.
BTW, the Rainbow has been cleaned out and in storage for 2 years since I have been using the BBB method. Just thought it might be convenient and cost effective since I already own the unit.

Thanks.

Paul
 
pandrews1 said:
I agree. Never said I was mixing. Just that I don't want to use something that raises CYA.

Certainly a fair warning since I did not say was not mixing either.
BTW, the Rainbow has been cleaned out and in storage for 2 years since I have been using the BBB method. Just thought it might be convenient and cost effective since I already own the unit.

Thanks.

Paul
Click to expand...
While I understand your desire to save money (my wife say's I'm "thrifty") anytime you try to use a device outside the manufacturers recommendations you add risk to the equation. While you may not intend to mix, friends/family may not understand and inadvertently do the mixing for you.
 
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