First, If you haven't read the introduction to Acid Washes & Chlorine Rinses, DO SO! Click HERE! To summarize: Chlorine Rinses: ONLY REMOVE SURFACE ALGAE!!! Nothing else. Again, I constantly receive e-mails(Usually from the wives of husbands that don't listen) stating that I was right, that the customer should not have done their own chlorine rinse or acid wash, that they gassed themselves, gassed their pets, gassed their kids, ended up in the emergency room, ended up gasping for air for three days or longer, ate holes in their clothes, shoes, skin, deck, pool, ... and cost themselves hundreds, and in cases, thousands of dollars more than they would have paid to hire a professional. Consider yourself warned. ( That said, about 1 out of every 8 people, or so, that try to do their own acid washes or chlorine rinses, says that they did it themselves and it came out ok, with no major issues other than a few holes in their clothes and shoes, a minor gassing of themselves, difficulty breathing for about 24 hours, and a few minor chemical burns. Even the professionals have to deal with this, on occasion, EVEN IF THEY ARE DOING THE JOB RIGHT!) This would be why I charge what I do for doing the job. It is dangerous, it is nasty, if done wrong, you can die, and others can die. If acid comes into contact with chlorine, you will die one of the most gruesome deaths possible. Death by mustard gas. If you want some of the nasty particulars, do a Google search on it. What is Involved in a High Quality Chlorine Rinse 1.) Commercial grade Chlorine Bleach (Undiluted) (About 3-4 times the concentration of household bleach) (Usually 8 gallons I enough) 2.) A Bleach Sprayer (Commercial Quality. It will eat out the seals, springs, ... of non-commercial sprayers) 3.) Shoulder Length Rubber Gloves, Complete Head Covering and eye / face protection, Respirators designed to remove chlorine gas, .... If you go without ANY of these, you are risking your life and or health. 4.) A fair amount of time. repeating the process over and over, bleach, wait, rinse, bleach, wait, rinse, ... Sometimes algae needs to be killed one layer at a time. 5.) Sometimes there is a light layer of calcium over the algae (Again, Chlorine rinses only kill algae, THAT'S IT.) because the pool is like the dead sea, and the owners refused to drain the pool often enough. This requires even more dangerous, and time consuming procedures involving, rinsing the pool out, pumping the chlorine out, repeating the rinsing and pumping, and sucking out every last drop of chlorine, and ever so carefully doing an acid wash, then repeating this very thorough process again to remove every drop of acid and doing the chlorine rinse again, then doing the process again and doing an acid wash, ... till all the algae and staining is removed. (This is probably the most dangerous process I can think of. Kind of like mixing up TNT and cramming it into pipe bombs, but alternating chlorine and acid is a LOT EASIER to kill yourself with, or permanently maim yourself, and everyone else, with. Coughing out your lungs, suffocation, with, or without skin burns, ... is a terrible way to die.) "Can" you do a chlorine rinse yourself? Possibly. You can get the materials. Do I ever advise it? Nope. I don't even advise that you be home, or that you let your pets out when a professional, that really knows what he is doing, does this. Again, Make sure that the person you get knows what they are doing, or people could die. (I have known pool professionals that KNEW WHAT THEY WERE DOING that have ended up in the hospital because of this. As the Myth Busters say, "DO NOT DO THIS AT HOME!" Are there times when I didn't use shoulder length rubber gloves to do an acid wash or chlorine rinse? Yes, ONCE, in 30 years. Lose a few layers of skin, off of both sides of your hands, and not be able to function for a couple of weeks, and you will discover that $35 for a pair of shoulder length rubber gloves becomes a cheap investment. Do the same to your face, and the expensive head gear becomes cheap. Figure out the cost of replacing a pair of shoes, and all of a sudden, knee high, "all rubber" boots, at $65 a pair, become cheap. Wear plastic rain gear or the clothes become disposable cost as well. Use a cheap chlorine sprayer, that the concentrated chlorine eats the side of a valve, gasket, ... out of, and have the pressurized chlorine spray all over your side, and/or back once, (when you forget your rain gear) and the $120 sprayer is cheap as well (Not to mention the fact that a naked pool man trying to rinse out his chlorine soaked clothes, and avoid extensive chemical burns, is not a sight your clients want to see.) (Nope: never happened to me. It did happen to a friend that thought saving some money on a quality sprayer was a good idea. He now owns the best chlorine sprayer made. (about $450.00)) Consider the things above, and add to these: 1.) That you may use $40 - $80 in Chlorine and other chemicals to do your chlorine rinse. 2.) The costs and time to get the right gear, sprayer, boots, ... That you will probably never use for anything else. 3.) That even if you do everything right, that you may be having trouble breathing for a few days. 4.) The time to drain your pool completely, along with the cost to rent, or buy, a pump that can drain out every inch of water in your pool. (No, you cannot use your pool pump) 5.) The fact that you will have to shop-Vac, by hand, the rest of the water at the bottom of the pool, and haul it out of your pool, probably 5-6 times(Hope your back is in good shape) Don't dump it anywhere near plants you want to survive. 6.) Finally, add the fact that with all of this, once you have everything you need, you are going to have 3-4 hours minimum, of additional time sweating actually doing the work, and guess what, $400 for an acid wash OR a chlorine rinse is cheap. Yes, $600 for both a chlorine rinse and an acid wash is cheap. (Restabilization and chemical balancing extra, and still cheap.) |
How Do I Figure Out What is Wrong With My Pool? My Pool is a Mess. What Can I Do? ... > Do I Need and Acid Wash? - Do I Need a Chlorine Rinse? >