Mrs. Homie and I bought a cheap, inflatable pool to use this summer, and we’d like to keep the bugs out of it and keep the water from going rancid as best we can. The pool chemicals I see at the store are, I presume, intended for larger pools. How can I best protect my little inflatable pool? A few cups of household beach every day?
Bleach will provide chlorine.
Get a hand skimmer to keep floating crud in check.
I’d guess 1-2 cups/week of 6% bleach will work.
Ignore the rest - no more chlorine that you need, you won’t need CYA (chlorine stabilizer).
The other chemicals presuppose a huge amount of water that cannot be easily dumped.
If your water goes belly-up, just replace it. As long as you remember the bleach, you should not have to worry about algae and the other crud associated with pools.
Machine dying. more later
Start here - I’m trying to get the Pool Calculator up - it will give you all the numbers for a pool. For an inflatable, just go with chlorine.
The calculator:
Buy it where they have spa/hot tub supplies. It will tell you how much, right on the product.
Thanks for the replies!
I bought chemicals for a 21" x 8’ pool, the smallest kit they had available from the spa store, and it was still too much. Household bleach is what I ended up using, plus a tester kit to make sure I got the whatever balance of bleach/water right.
That’s surprising. That size pool holds 600 gallons, which is larger than your typical home spa.
you can buy solid blocks that slowly dissolve
that may be safer than liquids.
Those “pucks” are the worst idea for large pools - they contain both chlorine and CYA (stabilizer).
The chlorine burns off. The CYA does not - not ever.
The more CYA, the more chlorine you need to get “Free Chlorine” (the form which kills bad things).
So, after using pucks for 10 years, you now need 100 pounds of dry chlorine. This is called (sometimes) “chlorine lock”. The only solution is to dump 1/3-3/4 of the pool water and refill with tap water.
Then add chlorine.
But not with CYA.
Play with the pool calculator - see how much more chlorine you need to add to get the same “FC” after you kick up the CYA concentration.
I have several pounds of chlorine + CYA. I buy pure dry chlorine and liquid chlorine.
The “Pool Chlorine” in the big box stores is just laundry beach, but with 10% chlorine compound.