Carl, there are a couple of reasons why you might not want to apply bleach directly on a regular basis.

First, simply applying it regularly is a bit of a challenge.

If you pour, you're likely to end up with it on your self. And unless you're doing it naked (but in sun glasses or safety glasses) you're going to tear up clothes. There's something about bleach that just wants to 'reach out and touch' some cotton or Lycra. After working with the stuff for 20+ years, I've thrown out boxes of clothes . . . and I've STILL got holes in just about everything I wear in the summer.

You can get bleach tolerant sprayers. But they're hard to find and in my experience, sometimes not as bleach tolerant as you might think.

Second, if you pour, instead of spraying, you're likely to end up overdosing your pool. Pouring bleach all the way round a pool, I personally would probably end up dumping a gallon or more in the water.

Finally, I'm not sure what it would do the surface. Bleach is a high pH solution, and stuff evaporates RAPIDLY in Arizona, due to the low humidity. Without prior testing, I'd be afraid that some sort of scaling or discoloration might occur on the surfaces wetted directly with bleach.


Using a polyquat mixture in a sprayer is not likely to result in any of these problems.

But . . . from a purely "kill the algae" point of view, putting bleach on it regularly should work fine.

PoolDoc.