switching from liquid chlorine to granules....why or why not?

[nabril15]

Hello all
I have read a few articles/links about the differences of using liquid chlorine versus granules. Granules will raise ph and cost a bit more, depending on the product that you get (dichlor or other stuff), and need to get dissolved before dispensing.

I ask you guys to feel out your opinions. Has anyone switched? Is it cheaper/better or easier? It sounds as though using granules will be "cheaper" since it contains a higher concentration of chlorine and thus less might be needed than liquid chlorine. But, it has an effect on ph, so the additional cost of acid might counteract the savings.

Your thoughts?
I thank you

 

[jblizzle]

Granules do not raise the pH (they usually lower it if dichlor or trichlor) ... All solid forms of chlorine add additional things to the water which will build up and may cause problems.

Review:
Recommended Pool Chemicals
How to Chlorinate Your Pool

- - - Updated - - -

You really need to to the math for yourself on the products you can find. You can't just look at the "strength". You need to compare the cost from the standpoint of the number of ppm of FC that are added to the pool ... and don't forget the potential added cost of having to replace water when the CYA or CH gets to be too high. Although perhaps you get enough rain that the build-up of CYA or CH will be much slower of non-existent.

 

[tomfrh]

Granules generally have other chemicals which accumulate and cause problems.

calcium.

cya

etc

 

[YippeeSkippy]

.....among all the above reasons, mine is simply that you can always pick up a gallon or two of plain bleach at the market each time you go.. no special trips to pool stores to buy pool chems.

Maddie

 

[PoolguyinCT]

Lithium hypo

 

[pabeader]

Lithium hypo

$$$$

 

[dfahrion]

I keep a stock of granules (calcium hypochlorite since my CH is always below 80 anyway) in the pool shed in case I run out of pool bleach and am too lazy to make a quick run to pick some up or it is out of season thus requires running to Walmart or some other such place to search for bleach (our grocery stores don't carry reasonable bleach). Around here the place to buy pool chemicals is Menards, but they are only super cheap (1/2 price) when on sale. On sale you can get 12.5% of Sodium hypochlorite (liquid pool shock AKA bleach) for $2/gallon about 2-3 times a year. Or at the end of the year clearance (now) you can get 24lbs of calcium hypochlorite for $40. In our pool the 12.5% works out to 32FC/$10 vs 16FC/$10 not on sale. The calcium hypochlorite works out to 17FC/$10.

The other problem I have with granules (at least calcium hypochlorite) is it doesn't dissolve well, I have to add it to a 5 gallon bucket and stir for a bit, then add to the pool, and then brush. I have a few white spots on the liner I'm sure are from not being careful in the past and don't want to add any more. That is compared to just dump in front of a return and go for bleach.

For completeness, we have a feeder for 3" tabs and when we moved in I bought a bucket of those (trichlor). I finally used all of those up and am pretty sure I will not be buying any more. The problem I have with those is with a covered pool for every pound of trichlor I add I had to add more than 1lb of soda ash to compensate for the pH drop. Thus I couldn't use it for vacations because if you load it up with 4lbs of trichlor it would knock your pH all out of wack when you got back after a week or so. Pre-raising the pH to handle that would bring the pH too high before you left. Even worse the feeder doesn't feed linearly, most of the trichlor seems to go into the pool on the 2nd and 3rd day it is in there, and changing settings didn't seem to effect it much, and finally to be safe you have to run your pump 24hrs to keep the nasty concentrated acidic tri-chlor out of your heater and pump. I found just bringing the covered pool up to shock levels before leaving is good for almost 2 weeks so that is what I do now.

For completeness, trichlor can be found on sale for around $2/lb. That works out to about 28FC/$10, but that doesn't factor in the ~80oz of soda ash (or borax + baking soda) to handle the 1.5pH drop and associated TA drop you'd also have to add with it. And that adds CYA almost as fast as the cal-hypo adds CH, but CH can go a lot higher than CYA and still be fine.

I would think dichlor would add CYA too fast consider even in Florida, and around here it is more expensive than tri-chlor as well.

So for me bleach/liquid pool shock is cheapest and much easier to add to the pool. Buying it is not as easy since a bucket of granules would last quite a while and keep virtually forever vs. a gallon of bleach which you can't keep for too long and you have to buy about 10 gallons of 12.5% bleach for the same effect as a single $40 bucket.

 

[Donldson]

Lithium hypo

Good luck finding that in usable quantities and realistic prices. Seems battery manufacturers are more desirable customers for lithium suppliers than pool chemical manufacturers.

LiClO is the unicorn of chlorine now. You might as well suggest residential chlorine gas injection systems, it's only slightly less plausible.

 

[PoolguyinCT]

Good luck finding that in usable quantities and realistic prices. Seems battery manufacturers are more desirable customers for lithium suppliers than pool chemical manufacturers.

LiClO is the unicorn of chlorine now. You might as well suggest residential chlorine gas injection systems, it's only slightly less plausible.

I buy it by the pallet & make the arraignments with an app 24 hours later a truck appears & unloads the unicorn.

 

[PoolguyinCT]

Please explain your comments pertaining to plausibility.

Do you have experience or access to either or merely being contentious?

 

[jmbuys]

Don't think he was being contentious at all, just being realistic, it's great you can find pallets of the stuff, but I'm pretty good at tracking things down ad for consumers the stuff just isn't available to purchase.....I got a tub from a friend that had it sitting around from a past pool-great stuff even after sitting around for a couple of years if I remember right, but on the consumer side all previous brands are no longer made and as pointed out the extensive use in battery packs makes it too expensive for consumer type availability which to me unless you are "in the industry" makes it not plausible for many readers of this forum looking for options.

 

[Donldson]

Don't think he was being contentious at all, just being realistic, it's great you can find pallets of the stuff, but I'm pretty good at tracking things down ad for consumers the stuff just isn't available to purchase.

Thank you. Actually his reply fit in to what I was commenting on: that industry members get so far removed from the residential scene that they offer up completely implausible comments with complete seriousness. When I say that suggesting lithium hypo for regular chlorination is 1 step above suggesting chlorine gas injection, responding to that with "buy it by the pallet" pushes that point home with almost depressing efficiency.

But if CT has a good lithium hypo purchasing option for those on the forum not caring for 200+ pools, I'm sure everyone would love to hear it. It would probably be cheaper to chlorinate with dichlor and dump the water monthly than to chlorinate with lithium hypo, but it would still be nice to know where to go get some.

 

[PoolguyinCT]

OP - to stay on track & not digress with serpentine logic.

Gas injection is far removed from broadcasting any granulated product.

& to answer your question, lithium hypo is a clean chlorine.

If lithium doesn’t jive with your resources, fiscal or distribution- that’s a personal decision for you to make with your wallet and local vendors.

 

[tim5055]

I buy it by the pallet

What is the price difference between it and TriChlor/DiChlor/CalHypo?

 

[JoyfulNoise]

In a climate such as Florida's, salt-based electrolytic chlorine generation is really the best option. SWG's are an expensive, up-front cost but, if maintained properly, their longevity is high enough to make them an exact replacement to any other chlorinating method. The costs, in general, are equivalent. And, even though FL experiences a lot of rain and dilution losses, salt is cheap and easy to replace in the water.

To the OP - when calculating costs, it's easiest to simply compare the price per "available % chlorine". Most forms of chlorine (liquid and solid) will state the % av. Cl2 on the packaging. So if you look at a bag of dichlor, or a bucket of pucks or a sack of cal-hypo, all of them usually tell you what the % av. Cl2 is. You can then use that to directly compare the price. What you will find is that there is a relatively small difference in cost between the different forms of chlorine as it is mainly the energy factored in to generate the chlorine in the first place. The biggest difference, as others have hinted at, is the availability and weight of the product. A 10% gallon jug of liquid chlorine has about as much chlorine in it as a 1 lb bag of cal-hypo. Yet the difference in weight is a factor of 8 and it's a lot easier to store bags of powder than jugs of liquid.