dichlor and trichlor adulteration How to know

[javox]

Hi, i have been trying to save a couple of dollars in my dichlor purchasings and i happen to find stores where dichlor ios sold at very competitive prices, even though sometimes i get a very good to excelent quality and sometimes i get very bad products. Price is not a good indicator since i have bought dichlor of far better quality at lower prices than others at higher ones. Of course this is not always true, in fact usually is the opposite but not always. So: is there any way one can test or see if it is adulterated far beyond the price gain? What usual adulterants do y have to train myself to watch out for?

[PoolDoc]

Sams Club usually sells undiluted dichlor and trichlor; Costco occasionally does so, but mostly sells blends.

Check for the following:

+ "% available chlorine" => undiluted dichlor will be 56% or higher; undiluted trichlor will be 89% or higher.

+ Look for other listed ingredients; avoid "multi-function" products; avoid products containing copper like the plague.

+ Do NOT confuse "% available chlorine" with "% dichlor": 56% sodium dichloroisocyanurate dihydrate will have about 31% available chlorine!

[javox]

Thank you PoolDoc. I will look for those guidelines. Can you tell me which dilutants are usually used? I mean, should i be worried of something pernicious gettting thrown in my family pool? One thing is to get inocuous extra stuff and another thing is to throw something that may harm my children's health.

[PoolDoc]

Borax, magnesium sulfate, & copper sulfate are among the most common -- but the container will not usually identify them, and certainly not by those exact names.

If you simply avoid buying diluted dichlor / trichlor, you won't need to try to avoid specific ingredients.

Regardless, that's your only practical option, since it usually takes a fair amount of knowledgeable 'sleuthing' to work out what's been added . . . and even then, some guess work is involved. You can learn how to tell WHETHER a chlorine product has been diluted, but probably not WHAT it's been diluted with.