Is Borax hard to find?

If you are in Pittsburgh the Walmart in West Mifflin had Borax. I picked up 2 boxes even though my pool has not be installed yet.

I have found that Borax is available but it often gets sold out in the locations I usually find it (Walmart, Target, Winn Dixie, and Publix) and it often is not restocked for a few weeks so I buy a box or two when I see it to make sure I have enough when I need to bump up the borates in my pool (about once a year) or bring up my pH (which I have never needed to do.) I also have often found many of the store employees are totally clueless when you ask if they have any borax and have better luck just looking through the laundry aisle myself.
There is no problem with 'stockpiling' it since it does not spoil.

However, it can get rock hard! It still works, tho you have to break it up. Water will dissolve the clumps. But you'll feel them getting much warmer than the water as they dissolve--must be exothermic.

Waterbear, that's really interesting.

It's been so long, I'd forgotten about it. But in the past I occasionally had nasty startups to do. At the time, I had access to 30% peroxide fairly cheaply in 15 gallon carboys. On a whim, I dumped an extra carboy in a nasty pool, just to see what it would do.

Fizz!

Basically, exactly the same thing as you describe happened, which was really nice. While chlorine will clean up swamps like that, it doesn't penetrate the goo layers well. The peroxide fluffed them all up so nicely, you could work with them.

I even have a vague memory of trying it with copper sulfate added first, which seemed to accelerate the fizzing.

But, I generally avoid such gooey cleanups, so it's not something I'd had occasion to think of for a number of years. However, at the homeowner level, you could use Baqua Shock, and probably cheaper than percarbonate.

PoolDoc

I do think that Jack Magic's "O2 Safe Shock" is percarbonate as well, if I recall correctly.

Paul,
I believe you are right about the O2 Safe Shock but Jacks Magic only lists proprietary in their MSDS so it can only be guessed at. Howver, there are many similarities between their MSDS and the ones for sodium percarbonate. Also, they caution about using it in chlorinated pools but recommend it for biquanide and ionizer pools and for oxidizing black coper stains to a more readily removed form. All this is in line with it being sodium percarbonate.

Not too many people have voted, but it looks like problems with borax are isolated, rather than widespread.

That's good to know.

PoolDoc

I actually just posted the link to this website in another thread before reading this thread:

http://www.henkelna.com/henkel-store-locator-9949.htm

If you choose laundry care as the brand, then 20 Mule Team Borax as the item, you can search for borax within a specified mile radius of your zip code. Hope this helps!

Very cool.

I'll repost so the link is "LIVE":

http://www.henkelna.com/henkel-store-locator-9949.htm


PoolDoc

The link appears to return national grocery stores chains and not other types that carry the product (local mom & pop stores, hardware, etc). I personally buy mine at my local hardware store since it's convenient (plus I'll do anything to be able to tell the wife I need to go to the hardware store :D).

One cool thing on the link was I clicked around and got to the website for borax and you can download a coupon for .35 cents off per box... http://www.20muleteamlaundry.com/#