Re: Calling All Chem Geeks (incl. THE Chem Geek) re: storing pool chems
This one is an eye opener. Sorry about all the damage but your experience hopefully will cause others, including me, to take a better look at storing this stuff. I've had a full gallon and about 1/3 of another one in my basement/garage for probably 10 years now. Stored on a concrete floor, off in an area near metal shelving and near a copper pipe contraption laying on the bottom shelf just off the floor. Took a close look this morning. The end of the copper piping closest to the bottles has surface oxidation (copper oxide) but no signs of excessive rusting of the shelving or significant discoleration of the concrete under the bottles. I also looked at the bottle caps and there is NO pressure relief mechanism and these are the original bottles....old as I stated.
Elsie, the bottles you have are they the original containers and is there any ventilation at all in that crawl space? It puzzles me as to how things could happen so fast. Since you also had a mold situation that tells me maybe the humidity was real high which it easily could be in a crawl space. As I recall from chemistry too long ago, highly concentrated acid is called 'fuming' which simply means it reacts with the water in the air to cause a fog to form, thus the term fuming. Heavier than air the acid is now in solution and could collect on metal surfaces and rapidly oxidize that surface. You would need a major acid exposure though, like the caps weren't on or the bottles leaked. Crawl spaces usually are at a fairly constant temperature so the bottles wouldn't breathe that much. Not like they were sitting in the sun or in a hot container that cooled down at night. I guess the only consolation is you probably don't have any critters living in that area.
In any case, my stuff will be gone since I don't need it now. Yes, I'll dispose of it safely and responsibly.
Al
16'x32' oval 22K gal IG vinyl pool; ; Hayward S244T sand filter; Hayward superpump 1 HP pump; hrs; K-2006; PF:5.5
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