Adding Dry Ice to Pool

[sevver]

LOL, gotta love it. You guys are truly chemistry nutz.

[CarlD]

Richard!!!!

OY!!!

[chem geek]

Yes, it was fun, but oh so educational...

If anyone wants to do this for Halloween, you could probably get by with 5 pounds of dry ice dropping in chunks when trick-or-treaters arrive. However, if you have lots of guests continually over many hours you'll need at least 10 pounds or more. You must use gloves (leather gloves work great) when handling dry ice as it is very cold and will freeze your skin if you touch it for more than a few seconds eventually leading to frostbite -- not as bad as liquid nitrogen, but not something to fool around with. See this website for lots of great info on dry ice.

Be sure to use a heavy old pan/pot -- thick metal, but not aluminum as the acidity of the water (from the dissolved CO2) might ruin the pan. If you don't want to use a hot plate, then just change the water when it gets cool and refill with hot water (hot tap water is plenty hot enough -- even warm water is OK).

I was actually (briefly) concerned that I was contributing significantly to greenhouse gasses by using dry ice so I did some calculations. Since the body exhales about 200 ml of CO2 every minute, this is about 0.36 grams per minute or about a pound per day. So using 20 pounds of dry ice is equivalent to having 20 people breath for a day. One gallon of gasoline produces around 20 pounds of carbon dioxide so using 20 pounds of dry ice is equivalent to using a gallon of gasoline or driving 20-40 miles depending on your MPG. There, now I've made you feel appropriately guilty, so have some fun and plant a tree (one tree absorbs around 1400 pounds of CO2 over its lifetime, mostly in the first 15 years of its growth).

Richard

[matt4x4]

I used to do this yearly on out front lawn, a witch with glowing eues, a couldren kept warm via a hotplate and a "fake" fire underneath, most parents were scared to step on out property, but that might have been because oif the lifesized "working" Guillotine i built which gets "remote controlled" by a friend hiding in the bushes - our display used to take up 2 front lawns (thanks to my old neighbours for the 2nd lawn) , now we're in the country with 5 acres and it takes up this little corner of our front lawn and is no longer as scary. Every year I build more, but I'll be 100 before I can get near filling THIS lawn!

[RavenNS]

Rotfl

You guys crack me up


Happy Halloween

[chem geek]

Here's a picture of the cauldron after having a large chunk of dry ice just added to it. The "hand" coming out of the cauldron is a nice touch, don't you think? Boil, boil, toil and trouble!

[chem geek]

So I tried leaving my pool open and the pH still stayed pretty much the same. I then realized that I could use my pool cover pump that normally pumps water off of the pool cover and could attach its output hose to a portable plastic shower that I have and put the pump into the pool (it's a waterproof pump -- essentially like a sump pump). I had to take off the shower nozzle because it gave too much resistance to the water and shut down the pump, but with the nozzle off I was in business. The stream of water hitting the pool surface from about 6 feet in the air has given enough bubbles and aeration to cause the pH to noticeably rise -- about 0.1 for every 8 hours of aeration starting from around 7.1

Though I could have just added some base, I thought I'd just try outgassing the same CO2 that I had added with the dry ice.

I hope everyone had a Happy Halloween.

Richard