Automatic chlorine dispenser??

[roederrl]

I live in Iowa and have been using 1 gallon bleach bottles to keep up the required level. I have a 24ft round a/g pool. Is there any type of chlorine dispenser out there I can hook up to the system that is reliable? I keep up with my pool usually daily and have never had problems since subscribing to poolsolutions in 2001 and following Ben's advice. This is when I set up my pool for the first time and have never added any chemicals not recommended on this site. Roger

[aylad]

I think CarlD played around with a couple of types of liquid chlorine dispensers and didn't find one that worked well for him, unfortunately that information was lost with the server crash earlier this year. Hopefully he'll see this, though, and chime in.

There are always trichlor chlorinators you can get and connect, but you have to be really careful because trichlor pucks will drastically increase your CYA over the length of a summer.

Janet

[CarlD]

Yeah, I tried the Liquimate brand and had disappointing results with it (I'm being nice here).

But there have been people who've had GREAT results with low-rate peristaltic pumps (used for chemicals, medicines and blood) on timers. You have to hunt up peristaltic pumps on Google or eBay, figure how much bleach you want to pump in, and how many times a day.

I think with some effective planning you can get a pretty good system going for a few hundred bucks.

[KurtV]

One guy, HawksNestBay, in this thread reports good results with the Liquimate: http://www.poolforum.com/pf2/showthread.php?t=1549.

I've read other good reviews of it elsewhere but also others much the same as CarlD's. Seems like kind of a crapshoot but maybe worth a try if you can get one from a vendor with a liberal return policy.

[Hawksnestbay]

I still use my liquimate with excellent results. But the problems that Carl described are accurate. If you set it above the lowest setting, It will empty the 5 gallon carboy in 6 hours.

This season {2006} I adjusted my routine. I now filter 4 on 8 off, and run my Dolphin Pro a least once a week. This allows less flow so that I have to change it once every 8 days. But I never have to add any bleach at night.

I believe the Liquimate cost me $89.00, and I even bought a back up, which I have never used. It is a low cost item that is worth the try, but certainly not for everyone.

I did go on vacation for 18 days, and I used pucks in the inline feeder instead. It did the job till I got back.

My pool is 35,000 gallons, heated, and located in Massachusetts.

I put the pool in in 2002 instead of buying a boat. I am so glad I did.

[Deuce2]

I'm new to this forum, so forgive me if this has been asked. I understand that everyone on here is stating that pucks keep adding to the total CYA, and that the CYA gets too high if you keep using pucks, and that is why everyone is using bleach. The problem with bleach is it is more manually intensive, and you can't use it when you travel for periods of 4 days or more. That is why pucks are great, you just put them in the inline chlorinator and everything is swell. Why hasn't any of these great chemists invented a puck that doesn't add to the CYA? Isn't it possible? I would think there would be a huge market for this if possible.

[chem geek]

I'm new to this forum, so forgive me if this has been asked. I understand that everyone on here is stating that pucks keep adding to the total CYA, and that the CYA gets too high if you keep using pucks, and that is why everyone is using bleach. The problem with bleach is it is more manually intensive, and you can't use it when you travel for periods of 4 days or more. That is why pucks are great, you just put them in the inline chlorinator and everything is swell. Why hasn't any of these great chemists invented a puck that doesn't add to the CYA? Isn't it possible? I would think there would be a huge market for this if possible.
Deuce2,

Welcome to the forum! I must caution you that as my forum name (chem geek) indicates, I'm a bit of a chemistry nut, so I will try and answer your question non-technically, but if I fail I apologize in advance.

You are absolutely correct that it would be fantastic to have some sort of slow-dissolving source of chlorine that did not add CYA to the water. Unfortunately, the chemistry of chlorine makes this very difficult. It does not appear that using chlorine alone will do the trick. Now you might say, "well somebody figured out that combining chlorine with CYA produced a combination that was a slow-dissolving solid, so why can't someone find something else to combine with chlorine that didn't have CYA?" Unfortunately, no one, to my knowledge, has found this magical substance. No matter what that substance was, it would also get introduced into the pool water, but if such a substance were inert, then this probably wouldn't be a problem.

Today's modern technology with certain types of micronized drug delivery systems might be a possible solution where small "balls" with tiny openings could slowly release the chlorine content. Unfortunately, the purest form of chlorine itself is a gas and this isn't readily able to be contained in such balls so that's why you buy chlorine in liquid form where the chlorine gas has dissolved in water to form another related chlorine substance called "hypochlorite". So you might ask, "why not just put the liquid chlorine into the balls?" and the answer is that liquid in such balls would tend to leak out. In drug delivery systems, the balls tend to slowly dissolve in water or with stomach acid and relase their contents, but if you had chlorine in water (i.e. liquid chlorine or bleach) stored in the balls, then they would dissolve from the inside.

At any rate, micronized drug delivery systems aren't cheap and I suspect the cost for the quantities of chlorine needed to enter the pool would be prohibitively expensive.

By the way, there IS a very effective way of generating chlorine on the fly in your pool system. It's called a Salt Water chlorine Generator (SWG) and it essentially uses salt in your pool to generate chlorine, which when used up converts back to salt. You simply add enough salt to your pool to make this process work (typically around 3000 ppm total salt) and this is just below or near the level where you would taste the salt so most people don't taste it or don't taste it strongly. The salt also gives a silky feel to the water and the SWG is generating chlorine even while you are away on vacation! The only downside to the system is that it is initially more expensive and the salt cells need replacing every so many years -- this has improved recently as the cells used to degrade much faster and therefore was more expensive.

Richard

[Deuce2]

Thanks Chem Geek. That answers my question, and explains why no one has done it yet!

[aquarium]

I'm still more interested in THIS (http://www.blue-white.com/Products/tankSystems/star3/star3.htm)than a SWG, for a variety of reasons.

http://www.blue-white.com/images/flexstar3_277wd.jpg

[chem geek]

Thanks Chem Geek. That answers my question, and explains why no one has done it yet!
There have also been some posts (http://www.poolforum.com/pf2/showthread.php?t=4619) by others (jereece post #24 (http://www.poolforum.com/pf2/showpost.php?p=29377&postcount=24)) about things like poking a small hole into a chlorine bottle (jug) and there are peristaltic pumps that can inject liquid chlorine into your pump flow, but the former is only approximate (so maybe OK for vacations) while the latter isn't cheap.

Richard