E-clear Tourmaline system

[sd2431]

We just built a pool and purchased an Eclear tourmaline crystal system that is supposed to use no chlorine. It is not working, just getting green. Does anyone here have experience with or knowledge of this system?
Thanks

[Watermom]

Have no clue and have never heard of it mentioned here on the forum. If your pool is turning green, then you need chlorine. I don't know if anyone is going to be familiar with this system or not. We'll see. In the meantime, if you want, you can search on the forum. Use the Google search in my signature below instead of the search feature that is part of the forum software. Until your registration is complete, you'll have to log out to see the rest of the forum, however.

Welcome to the Pool Forum!

[PoolDoc]

I'm assuming you're talking about the products sold by this company: http://www.eclearusa.com/ ?

Making claims like this:

The E-clear® ‘Chlorine Free’ New Generation 7 series - provides multiple forms of toxic free oxygen, which splits into 4 powerful oxidisers. (01) - (02) - (0H) - (H202). (archived - 20120725 => thread 18271)

We, or at least I, get sort of tired of dealing with goop like this -- it's not your fault; years of mainsteam media misinformation about chemistry, combined with very poor elementary and middle school science education has left most people totally vulnerable to nonsense claims like these.

Let me just dissect the quote a bit. O2 is normal oxygen (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxygen); OH is the hyper-active, but rarely present, hydroxyl radicial (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydroxyl_radical); H2O2 is hydrogen peroxide (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_peroxide), and O1 is 'singlet oxygen (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singlet_oxygen)'. I've linked all the terms to their Wikipedia articles.

ALL of these forms of oxygen are toxic; even plain oxygen under certain conditions. But, of more significance to you, NONE constitute a pool sanitizer or a algaecide. (If the company has claimed they do, in writing, if you'll get us a copy, I'll turn it over to Chem_Geek. He's familiar with EPA procedures to get those sorts of false claims fixed.

I'll also ask Chem_Geek to take a look; he has more energy (and more knowledge) for dissecting this sort of nonsense.

But, as far as your pool goes, you simply need to remove the thing, and choose another way to sanitize your pool. Basically, your choices are chlorine or PHMB (Baquacil, Softswim, etc.)

Good luck!

If you think hydrogen peroxide is non-toxic, go buy a jug of Baquacil oxidizer (27% peroxide) and take tiny drop of it on a tooth pick and touch it to your wrist! (Despite what it will feel like, it won't cause permanent injury that way! But do NOT get it in your eyes, where it can cause instant and permanent blindness!)

[PoolDoc]

Entire site spider-ed and archived, 20120726, for reference.

[sd2431]

Yes, that is the company. It was sold to me by our pool builder which is a very large company and builds hundreds of pools each year. They are as upset as I am. All 3 of the systems they sold to customers are not working.

[chem geek]

If you look at the ECOsmarte® science summary (http://www.ecosmarte.com/sciencesummary.html) it has a lot of the same B.S. such as keeping calcium in the "soft bicarbonate" form. The system seems very similar since is uses copper ionization to prevent algae and regular electrolysis of water that they claim is an oxidizer. However, it looks like they are using standard coated platinum electrodes and at lower salt levels that will produce mostly oxygen and hydrogen gasses. The other products they talk about, hydroxyl radicals, singlet oxygen, hydrogen peroxide, are produced in the tiniest amounts so as to be essentially useless. If one were serious about "oxygen-based" oxidation, then one should use boron-doped diamond electrodes to produce significant amounts of hydroxyl radicals as found in the adamant technologies Oxineo® system (http://www.adamantec.com/en/products/systems/oxineor).

I will add E-clear to the list of companies making claims such as "kill bacteria" which is in violation of FIFRA fules since copper does not even kill fecal bacteria and kills other bacteria too slowly to pass EPA DIS/TSS-12 (http://www.epa.gov/oppad001/dis_tss_docs/dis-12.htm).

[PoolDoc]

They are as upset as I am.

Yes, but the question is, are they upset enough to give you your money back! :puzzle:

As far as not working . . . nobody here on the Support Team, would have expected them to work!

@Chem_Geek: thanks, and go-get-em! :mad: