Quote Originally Posted by BigStein View Post
I keep forgetting to mention that the pool store guy, after hearing that I shock with bleach, said that he does not recommend that due to "the carginogens" in bleach. I didn't want to argue with him but it certainly sounds like he is saying that bleach may just give us all cancer
It's not the bleach, it's the chlorine. Chlorine can cause cancer. But the risk from unsanitary water is hundreds or thousands of times greater than the risk of chlorine-induced cancer.

They usually tell you "It adds to your dissolved solids". Yeah. But bleach is made from salt water (Sodium Chloride, NaCl--from high school chemistry) and the solution it's in is saline--so the dissolved solid is....salt. Funny thing: When you have a salt-water generator (again, chlorine from salt) you have to add LOTS of salt to your pool which drives your dissolved solids 'WAY up...yet that's OK.

See, it's all BS (Barnyard Slush) because pool stores don't make money if you:
1 ) buy bleach, Borax, Baking Soda and Washing Soda instead of tri-chlor, Soda ash and "Total Alkalinity Raiser".
2) You don't buy clarifiers, sequestrants, calcium, copper-based algaecides, or the latest...Phosphate removers.
3) Pool store water testing inevitably leads to recommendations of lots of additives--like 20 lbs of calcium in a vinyl pool.
4) No pool store sells the kind of test kits we recommend. I was amazed to actually find the FAS-DPD test kit as a stand-alone in a Leslies--and it was the only one they ever had.
5) They get their info from the pool chem companies, which are INCREDIBLY mis-leading about what their chems are, and what they do.