It’s quite confusing these days, Home Depot sells Clorox outdoor bleach and Clorox germicidal bleach. They don’t sell regular bleach. I was at HD for other items and read the germicidal bleach label carefully. It never mentions using it in laundry. I was afraid to risk buying it and ruining my clothes.
I made a special trip to the grocery store to buy regular Clorox bleach which has laundry instructions on the label. btw, just to make life interesting, grocery stores only sell regular bleach. Not the other two kinds.
Yeah, but grocery stores also sell bleach with fragrances added. Which, I’m guessing, would be a really bad purchase if you wanted to disinfect some drinking water
Don’t know about the outdoor bleach, but the germicidal bleach seems to be more concentrated. Looks like it’s 8.25% The regular stuff is 5.25%.
So, the germicidal one will kill MRSA faster, but will also eat holes in your jeans faster.
I have not seen bleach that wasn’t 8.25% in some time. It’s the new standard for Chlorox and the generics. That may be a reagonal thing.
All the different bleach ‘flavors’ is a common nuisance for me. It’s hard enough giving people instructions on sanitizing thier wells over the phone. I used to be able to tell people just buy regular Chlorox off the shelf. Now I either supply them the chlorine myself or have them take photos before adding anything. Don’t pour lemon fresh in your freaking well.
Now that the question has been answered. just a few tips about “grocery store” bleach.
A product is not allowed to call itself a disinfectant unless it is registered with the EPA and lists its active ingredients and percentages on the front label. Regular Clorox bleach (including the concentrated variety) is a registered disinfectant. Scented Clorox bleach and Splashless Clorox bleach are not. Some store brands are registered disinfectants, but many bargain brands (including the bleach at my local Dollar Tree) are not.
The registered disinfectant bleaches have to list the percentage of Sodium Hypoclorite on the label, the others do not. The others can contain any percentage of Sodium Hypoclorite that the manufacturer chooses. It may or may not be sufficient to make the bleach an effective disinfectant. Clorox does not officially disclose what the percentage of Sodium Hypoclorite in its other bleaches is, but some speculation on the internet says they have about half as much.
So, if you are buying bleach specifically for the purpose of disinfecting stuff, check the label of the specific product (and specific variety of the product) to see if it is indeed a registered disinfectant. And don’t forget that bleach degrades in storage, even in a sealed bottle.
Outside bleach has a stabilizer added to prevent near-instant oxidation. In sunlight, bleach will last seconds. With a stabilizer, it acts more slowly, but also doesn’t oxidize (disappear into the atmosphere) within seconds.
So, fast and effective bleach is ‘inside’ bleach. Bleach for outdoor use, if constructed with that intention, should be a little less instant, but it’s also got some protection from just evaporating/oxidizing into the air.
E.g, pool bleach (chlorine) tablets are stabilized, and they treat the water slowly and are not going poof into the atmosphere.
There may be differences but it still looks like a marketing ploy. They realised that most people only have one bottle of breach in the house. They think that by making different kinds, we will all need three bottles…
Something similar happened with Nurofen in Australia:
Sodium hypochlorite degrades, so get fresh stock when possible.
Since pool usage has been mentioned:
STAY AWAY FROM PUCKS!
Yes, they dribble chlorine nicely.
They also dribble CYA (“stabilizer”)
It’s the CYA which causes the problem - the more CYA in the pool, the more chlorine you have to add to get the ‘free chlorine’ level you need for sanitation.
Chlorine degrades quickly
CYA NEVER degrades (except in truly bizarre conditions)
Long-term use of ‘pucks’ gets you CYA that is off the charts. To get enough free chlorine, you would need a tanker truck.
The ‘pool guy’ will tell you your pool is ‘locked’ or ‘chlorine locked’.
The cure is to dump half or more of the water and refill with clean (CYA-free) water.
