How long should it take a 20,000 gallon pool to use ten of the 3″ chlorine tabs in the dispenser attached to the pump/filter?
Saw your follow-up. The “dispenser” is nothing but a container that your pump runs water through. It doesn’t have any way of knowing if you have no pucks or 10 pucks in there. If it has a 1-10 setting, you might be able to dial it down below 1 and get an extra day or two out of your chlorine tabs, but basically it’s something a pool service installs to get you to buy their pool chemicals. It is there to get you to spend more money at the pool store.
The reason that the pool has a bigger dispenser than it needs is that the amount of chlorine it’s using is always changing. Some of the factors involved are water temperature, water chemistry, amount of sunlight, amount of pool use, and whether or not anything (like algae) is growing in your pool. I have a 15,000 gallon pool myself and my use has ranged from one 3″ chlorine tablet every 10 days during the middle of winter, to one 3″ tablet every day during a particularly nasty attack of algae in peak season. In defense of your pool company, they may be keeping the chlorine level high on purpose (called superchlorination). As I found out the hard way, a little bit of algae can turn into a swampy nightmare in a matter of days. The best way to deal with it is to get on top of it right away by upping the chlorine, scrubbing regularly, and maybe adding some algicide. Algae can be pretty resistant to chlorine, my pool’s infection took over twice the maximum amount you can safely swim in befo
I don’t think that feeder works the way you think it does; we have a similar device attached to our pool, and in operation it fills completely with water so all the tablets inside it dissolve at the same time. The dial on the side seems to be mostly for show, I’ve never noticed any difference no matter where I set it. I would suspect that your pool is extremely overchlorinated right now. I throw in one or two 3″ tabs every couple of weeks, whenever I remember to; they dissolve faster than that, and the chlorine level in our pool is usually much, much lower than the ‘recommended’ amount — it barely registers on the little test strips — but that still seems to be plenty to keep the thing clean and clear. (I don’t know if this is because it’s indoors, or if we just have naturally cleaner water than usual, or because nobody’s peeing in it, or what… but it doesn’t seem to take much chlorine at all to keep things from getting ugly.) You should consider learning how to maintain it yoursel
Grither’s first answer is correct. 10 will last no longer than one. Go online and sign up at one of the many pool forums. Do some reading on the “BBB” method of pool maintenance. I have a 15,000 gallon pool and it costs me about $1 (and about 5 minutes) a day to maintain it using nothing but liquid chlorine, borax, and baking soda. It’s been crystal clear and trouble free since day 1. Consider getting a Liquidator. It’s an extremely simple, inexpensive, and do-it-yourself chlorine dispenser that uses standard liquid chlorine. It will pay for itself very quickly. I have one. It’s awesome.
The pool came with the house, so I personally didn’t choose the feeder. So the only reason it holds 11 tablets is so you can over-chlorinate the pool and use too many, thus buying more? That seems like a HUGE scam, and bad for the pool. It does have some sort of dial on the side. I don’t see any numbers, maybe they wore off. I have other reasons to distrust the current pool service so that is why I am so quick to assume he did not put 10 in. But if he did put 10 in, that seems like a stupid thing to do if they are just going to get used up – since the pool service is supposed to supply their own tablets. So they’d be costing themselves more money. I’ll read about the BBB method, thanks. We are looking into hiring a new service because it’s not just the chlorine that needs to be done but everything, the cleaning of the walls, the filter, etc. But I will definitely check it out.
