Is Borax hard to find?

I'm getting the impression that Borax may be hard to find in some areas of the country. What about your area?

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They sell it multiple places here (Walmart, K-mart, Kroger grocery stores.) Maybe other places, too, but those are the stores I usually shop at. One time earlier this summer, they were totally sold out at Walmart. I blame that on the Pool Forum and those dumb ole mods sending everybody out to buy some for their pools! :p:p

EDIT --- As much as we send people to Walmart to buy 5-way kits, bleach, and Borax and as much as we refer people to Amato Industries to buy a Taylor K-2006, they should send us a donation, don't ya think?? ;);)

What about the midwest where there is no coast?

I am in Pittsburgh PA..forgive me...considered North East? and yes I'm having trouble finding Borax. Bought the last 4 boxes at my local grocer and they said it will no longer be carried. Tried Wal-Mart, K-Mart and other stores noted in previous posts with no luck. Was going to try the manufacturer directly.

For folks in the middle, pick the 1/4 of the country you feel closest to. :)

Feel free to list your actual city.

Also, if anyone has found anyone selling borax online for $1/lb or less delivered, please list those locations.

PoolDoc

This online vendor, The Chemistry Store, is a good source for:

Borax

Baking Soda (sodium bicarbonate)

Washing Soda/Soda Ash (sodium carbonate)

I buy sodium percarbonate (the active ingredient in Oxyclean) there and use it in the laundry and for cleaning. It's especially excellent for soaking off baked on grunge on cookie sheets, oven ware, BBQ tools and etc.

Thanks for the info Anka! I do need to add a bit of a caution.

Sodium percarbonate is good for a number of things, but I need to warn that it
is NOT for pools. It is NOT compatible with chlorine!

PoolDoc

Ditto. Sodium percarbonate is best used for getting rid of Baquacil/biguanide/PHMB if one wants the conversion to go faster and be less colorful than using chlorine alone to do the job. However, it costs more than using chlorine for that purpose.

Basically, sodium percarbonate is equivalent to adding sodium carbonate (i.e. "pH Up") and hydrogen peroxide with the latter being completely incompatible with chlorine (i.e. the two will annihilate each other...gently).

H2O2--a colleague's brother was a rocket scientist working on H2O2 propulsion systems.... I guess it wasn't the 3% solution!

Some history on Sodium Percarbonate and swimming pool:

Sodium Percarbonate WAS sold to the commercial pool industry by one company that I know of as a non chlorine oxidizer. It was discovered that it not only was not compatible with chlorine but it also messed up ORP readings that many commercial pool installations depend on to maintain properly sanitized water. (I was actually told this by the President of said company.) Said company had stopped selling it for pool use several years back and (after moving their manufacturing location across the country) now is selling phosphate removers!:eek:

There is still one company selling sodium percarbonate for pool use as a specialty product to clear a badly fouled pool. The company is Proteam (who brought us Supreme and did much of the initial research on Borax as an algaestat in their St. Augustine, FL test pools before they were bought out by Haviland.)
The product is called System Support and it actually does work but is expensive (both for the product itself and for the large amount of dry acid needed to maintain the pH, since sodium percarbonate, as chem geek said, is highly alkaline). Waste has called it the "Alka-Seltzer Treatment" which is an apt name.

I personally have used it on green swamps with all kinds of leaves and stuff at the bottom. It causes the stuff to float up so it can be easily skimmed off and can usually clear a mess like that in about 48 hours with one treatment. Since it is being used in a pool without any chlorine at the time and since the peroxide is expended there is no problem getting the chlorine to hold after the treatment in my experiences with it. IMHO, it is useful for a pool service that cannot be on hand to dump chlorine in every few hours to clear a pool and where expense is not an issue.

However, as Ben said, once you have a pool with chlorine in it (and not a nasty green swamp) there is NO valid reason to put it in a pool.

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/#

I went to one Walmart recently and could not find any. Went to another and could not find it either - until I opened my eyes. It seems they changed the packaging on the boxes. They used to be mostly dark green, now they are light green. When you know what to look for it makes it much easier to find.

Actually the new boxes are white with a green strips. Just put some in my pool last month.
http://www.20muleteamlaundry.com/

I live in Missouri and found it at Target. Paid $2.99 for a 4.5 lb box just the other day. I voted Southwest and coast as there seems not to be a Midwest selection.

I see it at Stop & Shop (food store), Target, WalMart . . . but I did notice that they changed the design of the carton this year from last - totally different art now, so maybe that threw some folks off . . . ?

Walmart carries 20 muleteam in south Arkansas. They ususally have just a small section in the laundry section. You can try the internet, too.
Webfeet

I'm in Baltimore (Mid-Atlantic) area and could find the 20 mule team at a few local hardware stores and "SuperFresh" ( Old A&P).

But I was able to buy it very cheaply at my local Home Dept. It was less than $3 a box.

But now, Home Depot has stopped carrying it.

The only place I have been able to find it is at Wal-Mart.

I think it was $4.89 a box. a Lot more than it was from Home Depot.

And I can only find a couple of boxes at a time.

I went around to 4 different WalMarts to get 5 boxes of the stuff.