Is This The Right Beach To Sanitize?

[sl3238]

Can anyone tell me if this is the bleach i should be using to sanitize? Bottle says Clorox Regular Bleach (which i assume is unscented),but it also says "Patented Whitest Whites Technology" on the bottle...Is this an added whitener or does all regular bleach have whiteners in them? BTW, the listed active ingredients are: Sodium Hypochlorite( 6%); Other ingredients (94%)...Yields 5.7% available chlorine... Thanks..

[quantumchromodynamics]

Clorox® Regular-Bleach ingredients:

Water

Sodium hypochlorite

Sodium chloride

Sodium carbonate

Sodium hydroxide

Sodium polyacrylate

Sodium polyacrylate: 1.Sequestering agents in detergents. (By binding hard water elements such as calcium and magnesium, the surfactants in detergents work more efficiently.) 2.Thickening agents

It is the sodium polyacrylate that is the ingredient that is used for the "Whitest Whites" technology. You do have the correct bleach. The sodium polyacrylate should not be a problem. I don't know if any of the other brands of bleach contain it or not.

Q. How has Clorox® Regular-Bleach improved its whitening formula?

A. We have a patented formula across the entire line of Clorox® Bleach products*. The formula incorporates an ingredient, sodium polyacrylate, that binds to certain minerals that are in the water supply preventing them from depositing on your clothes. You get all the power and performance of Clorox® Liquid Bleach you are used to, but now clothes will retain their whiteness that might have been lost over time due to deposition of these minerals.

Q. Can Clorox® Regular-Bleach be used to disinfect water?

A. Yes. When boiling of water for 1 minute is not possible in an emergency situation, you can disinfect your drinking water with Clorox® Regular-Bleach as follows: http://www.clorox.com/products/faqs.php?prod_id=clb

Clorox Commercial Ultra Germicidal Bleach does not contain Sodium polyacrylate, so you could use that if you wanted to avoid adding Sodium polyacrylate.

Clorox Commercial Ultra Germicidal Bleach label.

Commercial Solutions® Ultra Clorox® Germicidal Bleach I is a 6.15% sodium hypochlorite solution, containing approximately 5.84% available chlorine by weight. The purity of its ingredients and the carefully supervised process of its manufacture make Commercial Solutions® Ultra Clorox® Germicidal Bleach I a quality source of chlorine for water treatment in swimming and wading pools. Commercial Solutions® Ultra Clorox® Germicidal Bleach I is especially suitable for use in chlorinators as it is a liquid and has no insoluble particles. Commercial Solutions® Ultra Clorox® Germicidal Bleach I is widely used as a source of chlorine for swimming pool sanitation and does not have any adverse effects on materials used in pool construction including swimming pool liners. - http://cloroxprofessional.com/bsb.pdf

You can find Clorox Commercial Ultra Germicidal Bleach at most large hardware stores, such as Lowe's or Home Depot. It costs about 25 % more.

I have used both and I haven't seen any difference. I use regular, unscented Clorox all of the time.

[sl3238]

ok..great....Thanks...I had visions of staining (white) my new tub...

[simonc]

Clorox® Regular-Bleach ingredients:

Water

Sodium hypochlorite

Sodium chloride

Sodium carbonate

Sodium hydroxide

Sodium polyacrylate

QCD -

A question ... would it be better to use liquid pool chlorine than chlorox? They sell it at my local hardware store in the pool section. It's 10% chlorine and is labeled "Pool Chlorine". I don't know the manufacturer, offhand. At this particular store, it costs about the same as Clorox bleach per unit of Chlorine.

Would using pool chlorine avoid unwanted chemicals, like lye or Sodium polyacrylate?

It's more convenient to buy and use Chlorox because you can buy it anywhere (almost) and use it for your laundry too. But maybe there's some advantage to using stuff that is specifically labeled at "pool chlorine"???

- Simon

[PaulR]

Pool Chlorine aka Liquid Chlorine is basically the same stuff as bleach except with a higher concentration of hypochlorite. The advantages are mainly price, and then lower amounts of stuff to use (therefore fewer jugs to handle). Lye is part of the process of making the stuff, all liquid bleach/chlorines have some. Don't know about the polyacrylate, that sounds like a Clorox special.

--paulr

[chem geek]

6% Clorox Regular (unscented) has the lowest amount of excess lye in it -- with a pH of 11.9 it has around 0.06% excess lye. Most chlorinating liquid has a higher pH of around 12.5 or more and around 0.25% excess lye or more so would result in a greater pH rise. Off-brand Ultra bleaches (also 6% like Clorox Regular) have a lot of excess lye similar to chlorinating liquid but at half the chlorine strength so effectively twice as much added per FC.

Since hot tubs tend to have a problem with rising pH when using hypochlorite sources of chlorine, it is better to use Clorox Regular bleach to minimize the amount of excess lye, though you are certainly welcome to try chlorinating liquid if you want to.

Also, keep in mind that higher strengths of chlorine will lose their strength faster -- this is roughly proportional to the square of the concentration so 12.5% chlorinating liquid loses its strength about 4 times faster than 6% bleach. See the table at the bottom of this page for a chart on the half-life of high-quality chlorine at various concentrations and temperatures.

As for sodium polyacrylate, Clorox talks about that here. It is primarily used to bind to calcium and magnesium that prevents them from binding to your clothes making them less white. I've written to Clorox before to find out how much of this is in bleach since I want to make sure it doesn't sequester too much calcium in the pool water, but they won't disclose the amount since it's proprietary, but I suspect it is quite small relative to the ppm level of chlorine we add in pools. Remember that the bleach used in the laundry only gets diluted a small amount compared to a pool or spa. 3/4 cup of bleach is added to a standard washer and since an entire cycle is roughly 15 gallons, that the portion during bleach additions is 3-5 gallons. That's around 600-900 ppm chlorine. So the rate of sodium polyacrylate buildup will be slow and would be removed during a drain/refill of the spa or during normal water dilution in a pool (needed to keep salt levels low anyway).

[simonc]

PaulR & Chem Geek -

Thanks for the explanation about Chlorox vs. "Pool Chlorine".

I guess I'll stick to Chlorox. The diclor-then-bleach method has been working fine for me.

- Simon

[quantumchromodynamics]

As you can see here, Ultra Clorox brand regular bleach is registered for treatment of Swimming pool water, Swimming pool water (wading pool), Hot tubs (outdoor) (water treatment), Spas (outdoor) (water treatment), Whirlpool bath water, Animal drinking water, Human drinking water, etc.

I'm not sure why it specifies "outdoor" for treatment of Hot tubs and Spas.

Also, as I noted above, Clorox Commercial Ultra Germicidal Bleach does not contain Sodium polyacrylate (I don't think it does, but I'm not 100 % sure), so you could use that if you wanted to avoid adding Sodium polyacrylate.

I think that the liquid chlorine should be fine to use if you wanted to use that. I would think that the higher concentration would help offset any excess lye that might be in it, although I couldn't find a pH for the HTH liquid shock, which I'm guessing you're talking about. The higher concentration would mean less excess lye per ppm chlorine.

I have found that Clorox tends to be cleaner and more consistent in strength than most liquid chlorine.

[PaulR]

I use 12.5% "liquid chlorine" in both my pool and spa. For the spa it needs very small amounts, typically 10-30 ml so I use a graduated cylinder to measure it (the same cylinder I use for my FAS-DPD tests). With 50ppm borates I have not had a problem with pH rise.

The trick with the liquid chlorine is to store it at a reasonable temperature, then even if the degradation is faster than Clorox, the difference is not enough to make a difference.

--paulr

[chem geek]

And since you already have chlorinating liquid for your pool, you aren't keeping it around as long as you would need to if it were just for your spa. Even with one person-hour per day bather load, that would be around 50 days for one gallon (figuring 2-1/2 fluid ounces per day). If one has half that bather load, then that gallon will get used over 3 months. As you say, if you keep it in a cool spot, certainly not in the sun on a hot day, then it should last reasonably well.