This episode is brought to you by HASA. Liquid is clearly better. Liquid chlorine is the highest purity. Works immediately. Has no added cyaneric acid or calcium. And it will leave your pool safe, clean, and clear. And buy the bottom feeder. Professionalgrade batterypowered vacuum system. It sucks to clean pools, so cleaning pools sucks less. Get $100 off with code DVB 100. This episode is brought to you by Skimmer, the number one pool service software in North America. With Skimmer, you can streamline your schedule, grow your revenue, and keep your customers coming back with five-star service. Whether you're a oneperson operation or an established team, Skimmer is your partner in success. Visit getskimmer.com/poolguy to try Skimmer for free for 30 days. The pool guy show. The pool guide show. The pool guide show. [Music] Yeah. Hey, welcome to the pool podcast show. In this episode, I'm going to talk about 3-in triclor tablets, chlorine pucks, tablets, tabs. These are all ways of referring to it. And I'll go over the use of tablets, the overuse, the good, the bad, and the ugly. basically of the 3-in chlorine tablets. Are you a pool service pro looking to take your business to the next level? Join the pool guy coaching program. Get expert advice, business tips, exclusive content, and get direct support from me. I'm a 35-year veteran in the industry. Whether you're starting out or scaling up, I've got the tools to help you succeed. Learn more at swimmingpolearning.com. So, what are the 3-in chlorine tablets? Well, they're tricloro cyaneric acid. There's a chemical formula of C2 Cl3 N30O3. Now, if you're a chemistry nerd, that's perfectly fine for you. For all of us that are kind of normal, we just call them triclor tablets. And that's basically how they're known in the industry. 3-in triclor tablets or 3-in chlorine pucks is another thing that I've heard. Just tabs. You know, most full guys call them 3-in tabs or 3-in tablets. And we leave the triclore out because we already know what we're talking or referring to when we say 3-in tablets. They're usually about 90% available chlorine. Some of them have a little bit less available chlorine. They have maybe some other fillers. Some have copper in them. I'm thinking of the Clorox Blue tablets that have a little bit of copper in them. So, how does this 90% available chlorine translate? Well, if you're comparing it, let's just compare it to Cal Hypo. We're pretty familiar with Cal Hypo in the industry. And you can compare this with Cal Hypo, basically like this. So, it has 90% available chlorine. Cal Hypo usually is about 65 to 75% available chlorine. And usually one tablet is about 7 oz roughly. And the chlorine delivered per unit is 6.3 O. For cal hypo that's about 10 ounces of cal hypo delivers that same amount of chlorine. So again if you have a tablet about 6.3 o is going to deliver the same amount of what 10 ounces of cal hypo delivers. So it's not like ex you know extremely stronger than cal hypo but it is stronger than cal hypo because it is a stronger form of chlorine but it's not like double the strength or or or triple the strength of chlorine. So let's compare it to liquid chlorine. So liquid chlorine is about 12.5% and one gallon of it of course is typically what we buy here in California. Florida you buy the two gallons of it. So 16 oz, a little over 16 ounces of chlorine is about the same as the one triclor tablet. The 6.3 o of chlorine being delivered to the pool. Again, it's strong, but it's not much stronger than cal hypo and liquid chlorine. It's just feels like it because it's in that tablet form. And you can add more tablets to strengthen it. So if you have a floater and you put four tablets in there, well then of course you're you're adding more ounces to of the product in the pool and in order to match that you have to add more liquid chlorine to kind of match that. Now it is slow dissolving so it's not as fast acting as liquid chlorine or cal hypo or even diclor. So if you have a pool that you need to raise the chlorine from zero to like five parts per million, you just can't put the tablets in a floater and call it a day and think that's going to work. So if you do have zero chlorine in the pool, tablets are not designed, the triclorar tablet is not designed to raise the chlorine in the pool rapidly. Think more like the triclorar tablets or a crock pot. If you were to cook a chicken on the grill or on your on your stove in a frying pan, you can probably cook that chicken in, you know, 30 minutes or 20 minutes. But in the crock pot, you're you're going to cook that chicken over an 8 or 10 hour period. That's kind of how the tablets work. They're very slow dissolving based on a lot of factors. cuz I remember I was contacted by a company in China that was going to make a chlorinator and they wanted some numbers on the tablets and I told them there are a lot of things that go into the equation of the triclor tablet and you can't get a concrete number of like if I use one tablet in the chlorinator how much chlorine is it going to release in the pool because there's the runtime of the pump there's the water temperature there's the pool usage there's the water quality itself to begin with all these are factors s that affect how effective the chlorine is. And there in lies a little bit of the downside of the tablet and I'll go over that a little bit later too as well when you talk about dosing. So basically that's what the triclor tablet is. They dissolve slowly in the water. They do have a high acidic content. So if you listen to any of my podcasts I always kind of compare I always mention the tablets have a pH of like 2.7 or 3.0 0, which means that when you're adding the tablets or using that as your primary sanitizer, your pool is going to maintain a pretty steady pH. Now, if you have a vinyl liner pool or fiberglass pool, I wouldn't recommend using triclor tablets in those pool types since you have a very low acid demand with the fiberglass and vinyl. The pH tends to drop really low in those pools if you use triclor tablets. There are generally two ways you can introduce the triclor tablets to the pool. One is with a floater. The floater typically should be tied. I usually tie it to the skimmer lid or if there's a ladder, I'll tie it to the side of the ladder. You don't really want it floating in the pool freely because if you have step a step area in the pool, either a pebbletech pool or a regular plaster pool. And if you've been doing service as long as I have or taken over certain accounts, you'll see like a little circle on the top step area or maybe a half moon shape on the top step area. If you have a pebbletech pool, you'll see a discoloration of the pebble on the first step. Well, that's from the floater kind of just sitting right over that area and the triclor tablets kind of leaking into the pool in a high concentrated form and the acid burning the surface of the pool. So, it's really to your advantage to tie the floater somewhere where it's not going to move freely around the pool. So, it doesn't get a chance to burn the plaster or the pebble tank of the pool surface by kind of floating right over that spot. Also, if the tablet falls out and is on the bottom of the pool, within a day or so, it's going to leave a really bad stain on the bottom, almost like a burn or rust mark. And that's because again they they are about 3 pH as far as the um acid content because they have cyanic acid. Now I haven't touched on this yet and I will in a minute when I talk about some of the bad aspects of it but part of the ingredients is cyaneric acid. I'll get to that in a second but this is kind of how you distribute the tablet either in a floater or in an online or offline chlorinator. Typically, it's a rainbow chlorinator that Pentare purchased many years ago. And so, Rainbow is the name that we all call it still, even though it's owned by Pentair. So, the rainbow chlorinators are popular out there, and they're usually offline, which means they have tubes going into the plumbing, or they're inline, which means they sit on the plumbing, and this is how the tablets get introduced into the pool. One drawback with the offline and inline chlorinators is that the triclor tablets when they're wet are extremely toxic smelling. They're like a mustard gas basically. And if you've experienced this, which I've unfortunately experienced this in several forms, but if any water ever gets into the bucket of tablets and you cover it and uncover it, that gas is pretty overpowering and it could cause lung damage. In fact, it it definitely knocks you to the ground and you're coughing up your lungs pretty badly. The same thing can happen with an offline or inline chlorinator if for some reason the tablets are not dissolving properly in those chlorinators. They can have a really toxic smell when you take the lid off. So, I always whenever I get to a new account and I'm taking the lid off, I'll take the lid off. I I'll kind of loosen it to the point where it's going to come off. And then when I pull it off, I'll step back a few feet and then I'll let it air out just to make sure because sometimes there is a tablet in there that's partially dissolved and it's extremely toxic. So that's a drawback with the inline and offline coronators is that they can really be toxic. The floaters, not so much, but you can run into a problem with the floater smelling a little bit, but nothing to the extent of one of those chlorinators that are attached to the equipment. I mentioned the pH in the tablet being low, and this is one reason why you don't want to put it directly in the skimmer basket. If there's a pool heater, it's pretty corrosive to some of the heater components, and it could cause damage, and it could cause staining out of the return line. I've taken over accounts before where they have like almost like a rust stain coming out of the return line and I pretty much know already that it's because they have tablets in the skimmer basket and it causes that because basically when the pool turns off, you have all that high concentration of really acidic water sitting in the skimmer. So when you fire the pool on, all that goes right through the plumbing, into the filter, through the heater, and that's where the damage can happen. Now, I had a question one time for someone was like, "Well, what if I don't turn my pool off? What if I run 24 hours a day?" That's a pretty good question because then you're not really having that high dose of concentrated water going into the heater or into the filter, but I still think it's a bad idea to have a tablet in the skimmer. It's just not something you would want to do. Floaters are really inexpensive and you can just put one right in the pool and, you know, that's call it a day at that point. So, no need to put it in a skimmer. So, the nice thing about the triclor tablets is that they're ready readily available. They're slow dissolving. They release a small amount of chlorine as they dissolve into the pool and they are a good way to maintain a pool because it's really handsoff and easy. You put two tablets in the floater and don't have to check on the pool for a week. Usually the free chlorine level is pretty stable. The pH stays pretty stable and so, you know, if it was just at that point, the product would be golden. But there are some bad aspects and some ugly aspects of triclore tablets. So let me touch on some of the downside. Now at the beginning I purposely didn't state a component of triclore cuz hopefully you're listening into this part of the podcast where I talk about the downside or maybe the dark side of the tablets I guess if you want to be dramatic. But every chlorine type has a byproduct. So calhypo is calcium. Liquid chlorine is salt. Dchlor has cyanic acid as well and tricclor has cyaneric acid. How much cyanic acid is in the tablet? About half of the tablet is tricclor in most cases. So I'm just going to say 50%. So, what this means is that if you use a 50 lb bucket of triclore in the season in your pool, which can be something that you can do because if you have a 20,000gallon pool, a 50 lb bucket of tablets can be used up pretty rapidly during the summertime in California and Texas areas where you get a lot of sun and heat. That's not unheard of to go through a whole 50 pound bucket of tablets. Well, what that means mathematically is that you're adding 25 lbs of cyaneric acid to the pool during that period. That's a lot of cyaneric acid that you're adding to the pool. So, you realize that of course cyanic acid doesn't evaporate out of the pool and it only leaves the pool through splash out and maybe backashing of the filter. And it can be diluted if you have a lot of rain, but there's not a lot of rain happening here in the summertime. So basically, you're adding these tablets to the pool and you're raising the cyaneric acid to the pool. And this is a problem because it will slow down the effectiveness of chlorine. And you're going to need more and more free chlorine in the pool to make it effective in a pool with really high cyaneric acid in it. So I would say that yes, the byproduct of liquid chlorine is salt. You're adding salt to the water. is probably pretty benign as far as a byproduct. With Cal Hypo, yes, you're adding calcium to the water. And if you're in an area where you have low calcium hardness, not a big deal. Like a lot of parts of Florida using Cal Hypo doesn't really raise the calcium hardness a whole lot in the pool. But if you're adding tablets as your primary sanitizer, yes, you are raising the cyaneric acid level sometimes to really obscene levels in the pool. I've taken over accounts before where I can't even get an accurate reading of the cyaneric acid is so high in the pool. And of course, the easy solution and a good way to control cyanic acid levels with tablets is a partial drain of the pool. So every month, you should be draining a few inches of water out of the pool and filling with fresh water. Or maybe you're draining a foot of water and filling it with fresh water every month or so. And this will reduce the cyaneric acid level because you're draining some of the water and you're adding fresh water to the pool. Now, how many people do this? Very few, if any, do this kind of partial drain with their pool if they're using tablets. They kind of just keep using them until they build up to a certain level and then they may do a complete drain of the pool or you may switch over to a non-stabilized chlorine like liquid chlorine or calhypo. When I say non-stabilized, they don't have cyaneric acid. So typically you're not adding more cyaneric acid when you use liquid chlorine and calhypo because there is no cyaneric acid in those products. But the danger is the cyaneric acid level can rise to a point where the chlorine is ineffective in the pool. Back in the day we used to call that chlorine lock but doesn't really exist. The chlorine is not locked up in it. It's just that the higher cyaneric acid level makes the chlorine less effective. I remember I was at the supplier one time and a pool guy walked in. is like, "Man, I have some really chlorine resistant algae. I mean, my my pools are really good. They are 10 parts a million, but the algae is still there, and I just can't get rid of it." And I'm thinking, well, it's really not chlorine resistant algae. The chlorine is just not effective or at a high enough level to actually work in the pool. So, Bob Lowry uses this formula of 7.5% of cyaneric acid, the free chlorine. And I think it's a great baseline formula to use out there to kind of see how you have to keep the chlorine level to make it effective. So, the reason why this pool guy had algae that wasn't being taken care of with the high chlorine level is probably the cyaneric acid level was much higher in 10 parts per million of free chlorine was not working. Here's an example I can give you that's practical. Let's just say your cyanic acid level is at 200 parts per million. Well, if you times that by 7.5%, you need to keep the chlorine at 15 parts per million to make it effective in a pool with a 200 parts per million cyanic acid level. Take that with a pool at 70 parts per million of cyaneric acid level, which is still a little bit higher than the 50 parts per million recommended. And all you need is a five parts per million chlorine level in that pool based on that 7.5%. So you can see the pool guy being exasperated walking in saying, "This is like chlorine resistant algae. My pools are at 10 parts per million and I'm still getting algae in the pool." Well, because the chlorine is not effective with that high cineric acid level, it's not fighting and killing the algae because at 10 parts per million, it's still five parts per million short in power to get rid of the the algae in the pool. If that makes sense. And that's why the downside of cinaic acid is that it raises the cyanic acid level to really high to a really high level in the pool, making the chlorine less effective. Now, in the second part here, I'm going to get into a little bit about dosing with triclor and some ways you can get away with using triclor tablets effectively without raising the cyaneric acid level in the pool to astronomical levels and ways to kind of mitigate the downside of cyanic acid that is in the triclor tablets that's being released into the pool. Looking for other podcasts, especially the second part, you can find those on my website at swimmingportlearning.com on the podcast banner. Click on that and there'll be a drop-own menu of other podcasts there also free to listen to. And if you're interested in the coaching program that I offer, you can learn more at poolgucoaching.com. Thanks for listening to this podcast through a week and God bless. This episode is brought to you by HASA providing products that deliver clean, healthy water for every aspect of everyday life. The bottom feeder battery powered vacuum system, portable, powerful, and only weighs 12 lbs. And Skimmer. Get Skimmer, America's number one pool service software.