Walmart chemicals

[star21fish]

Is there really anything wrong with walmart chemicals? I was thinking about buying a small amount of dichlor since I have no stabilizer in my pool and I am out of chlorine. The pool store told me that walmart chlorine has bad "fillers" in them. Does anyone know this to be true? I plan on switching to bleach after my stabilizer comes up a bit.

Also, my daughter got swimmer's ear 4 or 5 times last year and it was so painful for her that I don't want to see her get it again. I will say I had no stabilizer and my free chlorine levels would fall to 0 and then I would bring it up to good levels right before we swim (we swim everyday, but if we didn't I added chlorine anyway). She does have psoriasis, which I have read makes kids prone to getting it. Anyone else experience this problem?

[PoolDoc]

There's nothing wrong with Walmart chemicals, that's not wrong with all the other pool chemicals. Avoid their combo-shock product -- it has 'fillers' just like the expensive poolstore BioGuard product. Walmart PLAIN dichlor or stabilizer is OK.

Swimmer's ear is avoidable. Read this page =>
http://www.poolsolutions.com/gd/preventing-and-treating-swimmers-ear.html

However, if you operate your pool with no chlorine . . . you are fortunate if swimmer's ear is the worst thing anyone gets from your pool.

Ben

[CarlD]

Yeah, they'll say ANYTHING! I had one guy tell me bleach adds to total dissolved solids and is bad. Since the dissolved solid it salt, and since a salt-water generator pool has FAR more salt than you'll get in 10 years of using bleach, you know it was just a scare tactic.

carl

[aylad]

The only problem I see with WalMart chemicals is that their trichlor pucks do contain copper, which you don't want to add to your pool. (At least the WM pucks HERE have copper). Just check your ingredient list before buying them, if you use them.
Othewise, al my chems come from WalMart!!

Janet

[star21fish]

thanks everyone. I got 3lbs of stabilizer and some bleach. I had dichlor granular but put it back since I bought the stabilizer by itself. I have a huge bucket of tri-chlor tabs already. Just a note....the wal-mart shock plus also had copper in it plus a lot of other mess.

lol @ Ben...I didn't say I operated it without chlorine....just that my levels are by no means stable. I'm off to get a start on fixing that right now ;) You would think that if the swimmer's ear was from bacteria we would all get it? I dunno.....but I do know I would do just about anything to prevent her from getting again. I'm even adding EVIL stabilizer....lol...just kidding.

[star21fish]

oh......and did anyone have any suggestions on my other thread "deanna's swamp" about the smelly water?

[Watermom]

Kids are just more prone to ear infections of all types due to the flat Eustachian tubes. As they get older, the tubes become more sloped and thus drain better.