Welcome to our forum.
I started using bleach in my pool along with trichlor about four or five years ago. I started with bleach (along with dichlor) in my spa about two years ago after five years with dichlor or a combination of dichlor, N2 or Frog and ozone. In my situation being a daily user, bleach after using dichlor to reach the proper CYA level has worked best. It is not the easiest and it is not for everyone, but it is certainly not difficult. I now use chlorine only, no minerals, no ozone. I shock weekly with MPS because I like how it works. I use the small 24 oz bottles of regular Clorox which are easy to handle and are as small as my dichlor container. Every other week I may need to add a tablespoon of dry acid for pH but thats about it. I don't use borates or anything like that and I keep it simple.[glow]The advantage to bleach[/glow], IMO, is of course no CYA and [glow]the lack of TDS.[/glow] The water does not bog down. It has the fresh fill feel for months. Even though my water was always crystal clear with dichlor, it would slowly go downhill. At my four month water change, there was always that...there's nothing like fresh water...realization. Not so with bleach.I am not one to recommend bleach to anyone, but you need not fear it either. While it may not be for everyone, it works, works well and is probably as pure a chlorine as is practical to use.
Basically, the "bleach increases TDS faster" is a true statement of little importance since you change the water in the spa long before this becomes an issue.
Would this statement not apply to dichlor also. Meaning you change the water long before the increase in CYA mattersJust a thought
Can someone offer a better way of explaining this since apparently I'm not communicating this very effectively?
How about this?
What would be good for bleach if I decide to use it?
(Chas, what is the "high TA" you initially have in your spa?).
I am tempted to try the bleach method.
My TA is over 400 from tap and will be trying Nitro's way to lower it. Usually this is a two week battle to get down.
The difference is that 300 ppm of salt means nothing while 300 ppm of CYA means a lot -- relative to 30 ppm CYA, a CYA of 300 ppm reduces chlorine's active concentration (hypochlorous acid) by a factor of 10. The increase in salt doesn't do anything, until as HHH points out the salt level gets rather high.As I posted above, at 4 ppm FC per day chlorine usage, after 3 months using bleach, chlorinating liquid or lithium hypochlorite, you increase salt by 576 ppm. If you use Dichlor instead, then you increase salt by 288 ppm and increase CYA by 324 ppm. It would take almost 8 months of not changing the water for the bleach to accumulate 1500 ppm of salt above the initial fill amount. There is no way you could go that long using Dichlor at the 4 ppm FC per day usage.Am I not being clear about this? With the bleach you are accumulating an extra 288 ppm of salt (above and beyond the 288 ppm salt that Dichlor would add) in 3 months (at the aforementioned chlorine usage) and that is negligible. The 324 ppm of CYA from Dichlor is not negligible and has a significant effect on the active chlorine concentration, even after the first month when the CYA builds up to 108 ppm reducing chlorine's effectiveness by a factor of 3 relative to 30 ppm CYA.Can someone offer a better way of explaining this since apparently I'm not communicating this very effectively?
I haven't tested it in years - typical "do as I say, not as I do" spa dealer... but a quick dip of a test strip in the kitchen sink reveals off the scale on the high side for both pH and TA. The test strips I have top out at 180 for TA. I think the last time I took it into the store and ran it through the chem lab (Pinpoint) it was just over 200, but not over 300.When we opened our third ( and now only ) store, it was fed by well water. That was amazingly high on both pH and TA - and hardness. I filled our first spa, tossed in a little spa down and went home. We came in the next day and the tub was calcified. It took close to a pound of Spa Down to bring it right, and I shut off the heater and circ pump until it got close! Embarrassing! We finally got all the calcium to go back into solution, took three or four days, then drained and refilled it. This time we hit it with Pool Acid right from the start. Since then we have connected the building to city water, no more problems.And I don't recommend liquid acid except in emergencies. 8-)