Bromine

[ngh]

Hi all

I am just about to open our outdoor pool for the season. Water is quite clean. What shock should i use to get it going? I have just installed a Bromine tablet feeder.

Last year i was using Baquacil. I am hoping all traces of that will have gone over the winter.

Cheers

Nichthewood

[Théière]

Why don't you want to use chlorine?

[pachapapa]

Obvious!

Helps to mitigate any excesses during poolside summer orgies.[:P]

[Gardian]

When I read this thread half an hour ago, I thought to myself "Sooner or later, someone is going to come in with a comment (like that)".

Life is so predictable, eh?

[pachapapa]

[I] http://www.rwgrayprojects.com/synergetics/synergetics.html

[Théière]

I guess Howittgites has no reason to discuss his proposed use of bromine after having used Baquacil, sounds like a salesman's dream customer [blink]

[Anton Redman II]

Suggest read the attached. The extra costs versus the other benefits work for me.

http://www.villaservers.co.uk/SERVICES/POOLS/Bromine-vs-Chlorine.htm

[Théière]

Oh boy, a smoke and mirrors company who may just be a tad biased as they sell bromine,

"Using Bromine is slightly more complicated and requires support initially from the pool supplier".

So that's how they get their hooks into customers, sadly a whole load of their "facts" are totally wrong and misleading but that doesn't matter as you have a bromine pool it has to remain a bromine pool unless you completely empty it. I would/am very wary of any company that cannot accurately spell words that are industry specific like Cyanuric acid not Cymuric acid.

Bromine cannot be shielded from the sun's rays despite what that site says and chlorine can with cyanuric acid, sunlight also breaks down the chloramines, that's why in an outdoor pool you don't need to buy a UV system but people still do because they believe what the salesman told them.

 

I can take apart the whole of their script of mis information, the only really accurate bit is Bromine is more stable at higher temperature as in hot tubs.  Bromine if it were that good would be used in every pool worldwide especially commercial pools with the high batherload they refer to but it isn't Chlorine is just ask yourself why?

 

Yes there are chloramines and byproducts which are nasty to humans and they need managing especially in indoor pools but you don't need to constantly shock a properly run chlorine pool in a domestic setup, in fact I only shock at opening up in the spring and close in winter as a precaution.

 

[chem geek]

As for disinfection by-products, the brominated trihalomethanes (bromoform, dibromochloromethane, bromodichloromethane) are more harmful to health (more likely to cause cancer) than the chlorinated trihalomethane (chloroform).  With chlorine used in a pool with Cyanuric Acid (CYA aka stabilizer or conditioner), the active chlorine level is generally very low -- in a pool where the FC is roughly 10% of the CYA level, the active chlorine (hypochlorous acid) level is the same as in a pool with around 0.1 ppm FC and no CYA so is very low, yet still enough to prevent algae growth and kill fecal bacteria with a 3-log (99.9%) reduction in under one minute.

Chlorine is not only a gas and it does not have to be combined with other chemicals to be used in domestic pools -- that is just a lie.  When chlorine gas is dissolved in alkaline water (i.e. water with lye in it), it produces sodium hypochlorite, aka bleach or chlorinating liquid.  When added to water, it results in hypochlorous acid, the active form of chlorine, and salt.  It is not combined with other chemicals as with Cal-Hypo that combines chlorine with calcium to make a solid form or with CYA to make either Trichlor pucks/tabs or Dichlor powder/granules.  Yes, these latter products will build up Calcium Hardness (CH) or Cyanuric Acid (CYA) in the water, but use of bleach or chlorinating liquid will not -- it will only build up sodium chloride salt.

One does not have to shock to remove chloramines since a properly managed chlorine pool is constantly oxidizing bather waste and oxidizing choramines into nitrogen gas.  I didn't shock my pool at all last year, for example.

When CYA is in the water, it buffers hypochlorous acid so it is not affected by pH as much as implied -- the pH need not be so tightly controlled between 7.4 and 7.6 -- some operate their pools closer to 7.8 with no problems.

Chloramines are rarely measured in outdoor residential pools.  My FAS-DPD chlorine test kit almost always measured <= 0.2 ppm combined chlorine and most of that is probably N-chlorourea anyway, not monochoramine.  It is not true that bromamine does not have an odor -- ask people who use bromine spas and they'll tell you that it does smell, though different than chloramines.  Also, monochoramine has to get to reasonably high levels to be noticeable -- the most irritating and volatile is nitrogen trichloride, but that can be controlled by keeping the active chlorine level low, as by using the appropriate amount of CYA.

[Russethouse]

Posts have been deleted from this thread. Please keep to the topic and remember the Code of Conduct when referring to other people.

[ngh]

Thank you for that. Please delete Theiere post also for the same reason.

[chem geek]

I want to be clear that I wasn't saying one should not have Bromine in a pool.  I was just trying to counter the misleading statements in the link that was touting bromine.  Generally speaking, most outdoor residential pools do best with chlorine while bromine finds most use in spas (about a third of spa users use bromine; most use chlorine) and some in indoor pools though most still use chlorine.  For spas, in particular, bromine tabs offer convenience that one does not get with chlorine for spas.  For pools, Trichlor pucks/tabs offer that same convenience, but with the price of increasing CYA levels over time unless there is significant water dilution (for every 10 ppm Free Chlorine added by Trichlor, it also increases Cyanuric Acid by 6 ppm).

As for the poster's original question, assuming the Baquacil is completely gone, then you need to build up a bromide bank by adding sodium bromide to the pool.  The tablets alone will take too long to build up the bromide level.  Then, any oxidizer, such as non-chlorine shock (MPS) or chlorine, can be used to more rapidly increase the bromine level in the pool if needed (the oxidizer converts bromide to bromine).  Usually you use enough tablets to provide a sufficient background bromine level.  There is a potential concern from buildup of DMH from the tablets where most commercial/public pools limit that to 200 ppm -- DMH may reduce bromine's effectiveness in a similar way that CYA does to chlorine.  Just remember that once a bromine pool, always a bromine pool, since the only way you can remove the bromide is by a complete water replacement.