BillyPilgrim said:
Thanks. 555. My pool guy says the same thing about the corrosion.
I'll talk with him about the liquid chlorineI know nothing about it.
This is a long excerpt from an even longer email I sent to a buddy regarding liquid chlorine for his new pool. Go to www.troublefreepool.com and read through all of their Pool School, even if it doesn't make total sense, now. At least you'll familiarize yourself enough to understand some of the basics.
Biggest thing that has helped me is using liquid chlorine instead of pucks. Pucks are like 6% cyanuric acid (aka CYA), which acts as a buffer against chlorine breakdown. The more CYA in your pool, the more chlorine it requires to maintain cleanliness and it'll eventually get to a point that you can't add enough chlorine to overcome the large amounts of CYA in the water, resulting in algae bloom. The only way to get CYA out of your pool is to do a drain and refill. Going with a quality liquid chlorine ensures that you aren't adding anything that will build up and harm your pool or equipment. Also, don't use Clorox or any other typical household bleach they all contain other chemicals or scents that aren't good for your water and/or don't play well with the other chemicals you'll need to keep your pool balanced. Our pool uses about half a gallon of 10% liquid chlorine a day in the Summer, less in the winter. You'll figure yours out once you start testing regularly. The Wal-Mart brand is 10% and is like $5 a gallon (was $4 at the beginning of the Summer thanks, Biden). Fairly inexpensive. Leslie's has 12.5% liquid chlorine for like $6+ per gallon. I'll use Wal-Mart's brand until they stop selling it (seasonal item), then will switch back to Leslie's. You can also get it cheaper from a Pinch-A-Penny store, but the closest one is in Magnolia and we just don't head that way very often.
I'll admit that it was a pain having to go out and measure/pour in liquid chlorine every day, so I researched an easier method. The consensus was using a Stenner pump with a holding tank. I chose the Stenner Econ T model #E20T4G because it has a flow rate of .51 gallons per hour, so the math is easy in terms of how long it needs to run every day. I purchased mine from ChemWorld, which is the site that is linked. I mounted the pump to a Stenner 15 gallon gray poly tank with a required mounting bracket. I believe that most of your equipment is outside without an interior location to keep the pump out of the elements, so you'll need a rain roof and cover to keep the pump protected. Also, the gray color of the poly tank protects the chlorine inside from UV breakdown the white tanks will not do that. The pump just plugs into a regular household outlet, but it does have one of the large black inverter boxes as a part of the plug, so account for that when you're deciding where and how to plug it in. The Stenner pumps chlorine through a tube into an included duckbill valve that is set up with 1/4" and 1/2" NPT threads. I just took the chlorine puck feeder off of my pool equipment, bought a replacement 1.5" PVC cap, and drilled and tapped it to accept the 1/4" threads on the duckbill valve. You can see it in the picture below. The only reason I went with 1/4" instead of 1/2" is because that's the biggest NPT tap Turner's had when I was setting this up. I think the 1/2" would make the mounting point a little more sturdy as it recesses the duckbill valve into the plumbing a little more.
