Can I Use Bromine In My Pool?
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There are very few swimming pools that use bromine as the primary sanitizing and disinfecting agent. By a huge landslide majority most swimming pools use chlorine as the sanitizer of choice for keeping the water clean and safe to swim in. There is a specific reason why chlorine above all others is so popular for use in swimming pools...four reasons actually. The four reason that chlorine is used is because chlorine is an oxidizer, chlorine is a sanitizer, chlorine is an algicide and finally chlorine is able to build and hold a residual value within the water.
No matter what alternative to chlorine you consider using you will find that it fails to meet at least one of the four reasons listed above. There are many options on the market which can do one or more of these four things but there is nothing that can doo all four. Only chlorine...and bromine. So if bromine is also able to do all four of these things then why is it that chlorine is so much more popular in pools. Is bromine a viable alternative to chlorine in pools? The answer to this for the vast majority of pools will be no. Keeping reading to learn why:
Bromine is expensive - Not THE reason why chlorine is so much more popular than bromine in pools but definitely something that warrants mentioning. Bromine, in general, costs more than chlorine products to buy. Even with chlorine prices rising dramatically over the past few years bromine still remains more expensive than chlorine, puck for puck. So right away bromine has a disadvantage compared to chlorine sanitizer.
Bromine requires regular oxidizer treatments - Chlorine and bromine are very similar however they do have their differences and one of the biggest differences that a pool owner might notice is that bromine requires regular oxidizer (non chlorine shock) treatments. The oxidizer treatments will reactivate spent bromine into active bromine again. Something that chlorine is not able to do. This is why if you add oxidizer to a bromine pool or spa the free bromine levels will rise. From a maintenance perspective this means that in addition to the expensive bromine you will also have to purchase oxidizer / non chlorine shock products for regular treatment.
Bromine is unstable and depletes in sunlight - Easily the number one reason why you do not want to use bromine as a sanitizer in your pool is simply that we have no available method to stabilize the bromine against the degrading effects of UV from the sun. With chlorine, if you were to use no stabilizer (CYA) then you could expect to deplete your chlorine levels every single day no matter how much chlorine you started the day with. Bromine is the same way. In direct sunlight bromine will deplete and you will need to add oxidizer or more bromine to increase the levels in the water every day. This is why it is slightly more common for indoor pools to use bromine simply because they do not have any direct sunlight depleting the bromine levels. Without that one concern of sunlight the comparison between chlorine versus bromine as the chemical sanitizer in your pool becomes much closer.
Bromine is most commonly used in hot tubs because hot tubs are covered 99% of the time against sunlight. Additionally the hot water environment is more suitable to bromine. Hot tubs tend to run high on the pH scale and bromine is more active at higher pH levels than chlorine is. While you can choose to use chlorine instead of bromine in a hot tub I usually describe this as hard mode, versus easy mode with bromine. In pools however the answer is almost always to use chlorine instead of bromine. If you think that bromine might be a better option because you think you are allergic to chlorine I would suggest that chlorine allergy is exceedingly rare, but unbalanced pool and spa water is very common, especially adverse pH levels which many people can react negatively to. Most commonly chlorine allergy is actually pH sensitivity mixed with poorly maintained water chemistry.
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Swimming Pool Steve is an award winning, second generation swimming pool specialist from Ontario Canada and one of the most trusted voices in the swimming pool industry. With over 20,000,000 views on the Swimming Pool Steve YouTube Channel, winner of the Pleatco Pool & Spa Industry Leadership award and author of hundreds of pool and spa articles both online and in print. Steve is committed to helping pool and spa owners as well as pool and spa industry workers learn more about the technical side of building, renovating, repairing and maintaining all types of swimming pools and spas. Follow Swimming Pool Steve on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.
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