Algae loves my pool

[aylad]

If you plan to drain and refill some water, go ahead and do that firt. Then test for CYA again and shock based on the chart and new level. The key to killing it all, though, is to sustain that shock level until the pool is blue and clear-- and until you dont lose anh chlorine from sundown to sunup. To keep your CYA down, use bleach or cal hypo for chlorination--no trichlor or dichlor.

Janet

[CarlD]

To answer your question, No. Bleach and Liquid Chlorine (which is the same thing, only more concentrated) do NOT have stabilizer. They don't affect pH, add stabilizer, or add calcium. That's why Bleach/LC is the perfect chlorination tool.

Carl

[mrsbusymomee]

So I am done draining my pool and am now filling it back up. I went ahead and pumped to waste to clean out what I could. Pool looks pretty good.
Anyway, I found 2 gallons of LC named SHOCK that I bought last year. It contains 10% chlorine and doesn't list what the other 90% is. Is that ok?
Also after I get my pool back to normal, should I still use the tablets I have that are trichlor or use something else? If I use bleach all the time, how do you maintain the chlorine that way and how often do you put it in?

Thanks for all your advice!

[Watermom]

How much did you drain? Does the shock that you have list sodium hypochlorite as the ingredient? If so, you can go ahead and use it in the pool, but I doubt very seriously that it is still 10% after that much time. Unless you did a total drain and refill (and I hope you didn't!!!), you do NOT want to use the trichlor tabs. Just use bleach. If you use bleach, you just have to test it every evening or at least every other evening and add a little bleach. How much to add depends on what your cya level is. I usually check it every evening and add a little bleach. It takes me no more than 5 minutes at most.

[aylad]

Use the "Best guess chlorine chart" in Watermom's and my sig to determine where your chlorine needs to be, based on your CYA level, and add your bleach accordingly.

Janet

[CarlD]

10% liquid Chorine "Shock" is really just 10% bleach (it usually is actually a little higher). Regular bleach is 5.25%, "Ultra" (now the standard) is 6%.

What's the other 90%? Salt water! Yup! Bleach is made from brine (saltwater) as the formula for salt is NaCl...Sodium Chloride. So don't worry about it. If you use nothing but bleach/Liquid Chlorine for 10 years you still wont approach the salt water levels necessary for a pool that uses Salt Water Chlorine Generation (SWG,or SWCG).

[chem geek]

I wrote this post about what is in various products since this question of whether grocery/hardware store equivalents are really the same as pool store products comes up frequently from users new to these forums. Regular Clorox (Ultra in Canada) and off-brand Ultra bleaches are pretty much all 6% sodium hypochlorite, 4.7% sodium chloride salt and 88.7% water. Clorox has a very small amount of sodium polyacrylate in it as well (it is a mild metal sequestrant but as diluted in pools the amount is negligible).