Most pool chemicals have a shelf life of 3-5 years, when stored properly: Consistent and cool temperatures, in a dry and dark location. Tight bucket lids and bottle caps, and sealed inner bags to lock out moisture and contaminants.
Depending on how much you have added and the size of your pool, it is generally safe to wait about 4 hours after adding liquid chlorine or until levels reach 5 ppm or lower.
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.
Elevated pool-chlorine levels really can cause fading of clothing over time. Also, vinyl swimming-pool liners and even colored pool tiles exposed to constant high levels of chlorine will bleach out over time. Keeping swimming pool chlorine at about 2 ppm, though, can prevent most pool bleaching from occurring.
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. Household bleaches often have unwanted fragrances and colors.
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.
Short answer: yes. Longer answer: it depends on the formulation. The label on every bleach bottle should tell you the ratio of sodium hypochlorite (and available chlorine) in the bottle to everything else. A higher percentage is generally better, as you'll need to use less bleach to treat your pool.
And how do you fix it? Of course, too much chlorine in pool water can be dangerous. Exposure to over-chlorination can provoke asthma, lung irritation, and potentially skin and eye irritation. As well as being potentially bad for you, it's bad for your pool.
Swimming pool shock contains 12.5% sodium hypochlorite (bleach) vs. 6-8.5% for Clorox (bleach). Some Clorox products go as high as 8.5%. At a 12.5% concentrate, liquid pool shock is approximately 2x's stronger than Clorox bleach.
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. The addition of chlorine to your pool water has to be done in a careful manner.
Answer: It is true that pool chlorine is stronger than bleach. For bleach and water to be the same strength as pool chlorine and water, you would have to adjust the ratio, increasing the bleach and reducing the water.
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. It also can take shape in two states of matter – gas and liquid.
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.
Now you can know the gallons of bleach you would need to shock your pool as follows: use 0.5 gallons of Clorox per 10K gallons of water to increase the level of chlorine by 5 ppm. If you want to raise the level of chlorine by 2.5 ppm, then you would need ¼ gallon of the product per 10K gallons of water.
If your chlorine test turns orange, your pool water has a very high chlorine content, above 4 ppm. Stop using chlorine until the chlorine test shows a result within the normal range. If you want faster results, use a chlorine neutralizer to bring chlorine back into the proper range.
You shouldn't mix bleach and shock together in a container. Add them to the pool separately.
The shortage is due to increased demand for pool supplies during the pandemic and a chemical fire at a BioLab facility in Louisiana after Hurricane Laura that knocked out one of the country's three main chlorine manufacturers.
The 'chlorine' that is in the bleach is actually sodium hypochlorite. Swimming pool shock usually has 12% sodium hypochlorite (bleach) compared to 6-8% of Clorox bleach.
Cloudy or milky swimming pool water is caused by seven main issues: improper levels of chlorine, imbalanced pH and alkalinity, very high calcium hardness (CH) levels, faulty or clogged filter, early stages of algae, ammonia, and debris.
In fact, bleach is often recommended for emergency water disinfection, so reasoning suggests it can work well in a kiddie pool. However, not much bleach is required to properly sanitize a given amount of water.
Daily as needed and indicated by measurement. One caveat, however: if your total alkalinity and pH are not where they should be, you will find it difficult to keep enough free chlorine in your pool water. Adjust your alkalinity first, then correct your chlorine.
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.
If properly diluted and used as directed, a bleach bath is safe for children and adults. For best results: Add 1/4 cup (about 59 milliliters) to 1/2 cup (about 118 milliliters) of bleach to a 40-gallon (about 151-liter) bathtub filled with warm water.