Water Quality in your Intex Pool – Other Chemicals

Although chlorine is the least expensive, most convenient and most effective sanitizer for your pool water, there are other options out there. Bromine and Baquacil are the two most well known.

Bromine is mostly used for spas or hot tubs, so it is not recommended for use in your Intex pool.

Baquacil is similar to hydrogen peroxide, and is designed for swimming pools. Some users are quite happy with it, however it is much more expensive than chlorine and you can only buy it from a local pool store. So if you run out of a chemical over a holiday weekend or after the pool store closes, you are out of luck. Also, many users have reported that a baquacil pool is easy to maintain for a year or two, but it eventually will become contaminated with algae and once it does it is very difficult and expensive to recover from. Baquacil advertises advantages such as no smell, no discoloration of clothing, and no burning/stinging. However, a properly balanced chlorine pool will also not have these problems. If you have a baquacil pool and want to convert to a chlorine pool, the process can be difficult and time consuming as the two chemicals are not compatible. Essentially, you will need to add chlorine to the pool until you hit shock levels and then maintain the chlorine at those levels for a few days. The more often you measure & add chlorine, the faster the process will go. Note that your water will turn a very, very ugly shade of green during this process, it will look terrible, but do not panic, it will eventually clear up.

 

3 thoughts on “Water Quality in your Intex Pool – Other Chemicals”

    • Deb, yes it’s possible to use Bromine instead of chlorine but Chlorine has a few major advantages

      First of all, Bromine is quite a bit more expensive than chlorine – around 40% or so. You must purchase it in tablet or powder form, whereas you can buy chlorine in liquid form (household bleach).

      Chlorine is also more readily available at supermarkets, Wal-Mart, Target, and bulk warehouse stores like Sam’s or Costco. In a pinch, you could even buy bleach at a convenience store and use it in your pool.

      Finally – and probably most important – Chlorine can be stabilized against the effects of the sun. In a sun-drenched pool, Bromine will break down more quickly, which means you’ll need to replenish it more often and spend more money doing so.

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    • Bromine works best in hot water like what’s found in hot tubs. It will work in an Intex pool, but probably not very well unless you have a way to heat your water and keep it very warm.

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