It is important to know what exactly bleach is before you put it in your pool. Household bleach, Clorox and liquid chlorine can all be used to sanitize a pool. They are all types of chlorine. Household bleaches such as Clorox usually contain about 5-6% available chlorine, about half that of pool liquid chlorine.
Pool-grade chlorine and a jug of Clorox are essentially the same thing, chemically. However, they're not made with the same concentrations of chlorine. Pool-grade chlorine, which you can usually buy in tablets, granules, or as a liquid, tends to be available in formulations of between 65% and nearly 100% chlorine.
6 reasons why you should avoid disinfecting your pool with bleach instead of chlorine. Finally, if it is not properly dosed, bleach can become dangerous for bathers! Pool water that is too concentrated in bleach can become toxic, irritating the eyes, skin and respiratory tract of swimmers.
High concentrations of chlorine (above 1.5 ppm) will attack the liner and bleach it, thus damaging it. Any level below this range will weaken its ability to kill off bacteria.
What can you use instead? Bromine — considered a safe substitute for chlorine. Looks for BCDMH tablets, which are typically 66% bromine and 27% chlorine. If unable to find, you can use just bromine but it may leave the water a dull green color.
Common unscented household bleach (sodium hypochlorite) works well to shock a pool.
It is a good idea to wait at least 20 minutes after adding the water balancing chemicals. If you use calcium chloride in your pool, you should wait at least 2 hours to swim.
Bleach is safe and the only chemical you should be using in your pool unless cleaning pool tile with baking soda. So yes, you can use bleach to keep your pool water chemistry balanced.
Clorox is considered to be the most common bleach product that is used for pools. It has a 5.7% concentration, so if you have a 5,000-gallon pool, you will be using 3 cups or 24 oz to raise the chlorine levels.
Best time is either after sunset, or when you need it. Bleach doesn't lose concentration overnight unless it has something to work on. In fact, a good way to tell if your pool is in good shape is to do an overnight chlorine test. Ideally, the FC at night should be the same as the FC level the next morning.
At a 12.5% concentrate, liquid pool shock is approximately 2x's stronger than Clorox bleach. The recommends 5 tablespoons of regular bleach per gallon of water to properly disinfect a surface. When using liquid pool shock, dilute it at a rate of 2.5 to 3 tablespoons per gallon of water.
It is possible use use the tablets in your large wading pool. However, this is not economical and it will take a large amount of tablets to clean your pool. Unless you have a major supply of these tablets on hand, I would not suggest using them to clean a pool.
To mix chlorine bleach combine 5.25 percent sodium hypochlorite and 94.75 percent water. To mix non-chlorine bleach, combine equal parts hydrogen peroxide and water. Pour mixture into the plastic container, and secure tightly. Shake to mix ingredients.
After your cyanuric acid level is set, add the bleach. Then proceed with daily testing until you understand how much chlorine your pool uses. At this point, chlorine maintenance can be as simple as adding a little bleach to your pool every day to keep it within the target levels.
Baking soda, also known as sodium bicarbonate is naturally alkaline, with a pH of 8. When you add baking soda to your pool water, you will raise both the pH and the alkalinity, improving stability and clarity.
However, these terms are relative but not similar. The basic difference between chlorine and bleach is that chlorine is a natural element, while bleach is a solution of many elements. Moreover, chlorine occurs in nature as an essential part of plants and animals.
You may have seen chlorine tablets advertised as effective methods for cleaning a toilet tank. However, after doing some research you're still not sure whether chlorine tablets are safe for toilet tanks. The short answer is no. Chlorine, while good for your swimming pool, is not good for your toilet.
Green algae, unlike its black counterpart, is a true algae; it isn't resistant to chlorine, so you can control it by shocking the pool. If you don't want to spend a lot of money on expensive pool chemicals, you can shock with household bleach.
WADING POOL DISINFECTION
When chlorinating wading pools, use 1/8 cup per 100 gallons of new water. Mix required amount of Clorox® Regular Bleach2 with 2 gallons of water and scatter over surface of pool. Mix uniformly with pool water. Empty small pools daily.
*1 gallon of chlorinating liquid delivers the same amount of chlorine as 2 chlorinating tablets.
Pools can immediately turn green after shocking when they have metals like copper in the water. These metals oxidise when exposed to high levels of chlorine which makes the pool water turn green. Adding a metal control product such as Zodiac Metal Remover will help to restore the pool water.
You cannot overshock a swimming pool or add too much. Adding too much shock or overshocking your pool will kill off algae. The negative of adding too much shock is it will upset the chemical balance of your pool.
What's important for you to know: You shouldn't swim in a pool that's green until you test the chemical levels, like the officials in Rio did before the diving event began. It's the balance of things like chlorine, pH, and alkalinity in a pool that keeps it sterilized.