Most people’s idea of an above ground pool is about 4ft above the ground but how about 650ft above the ground?
This new pool in Singapore spans across three huge hotel towers and is 150m long. With an infinity edge that looks out over the skyline you need a good head for heights to take the plunge in this pool.
Life on the edge
A pool with a view
The last word in above ground pools
If you would like a pool like this it is yours for the bargain price of four billion pounds.
Bayrol have annouced to the trade that they are withdrawing their non-chlorine alternative Duo Tabs from their range. Users of Duo Tabs are being advised to change to Soft & Easy.
Duo Tabs were introduced to the market 20 years ago and ten years ago Bayrol brought out Soft & Easy. The two products are essentially the same. The chemical make up is the same but one is in tablet form, the other in granular form. Because the tablets came out before the granules they built up a loyal following but here at PoolStore we sell 3 times as much of the granular product as we do the tablet form.
The cost implication to the change over should be favourable. Based on a 60 cubic metre pool with Duo Tabs you would use 2 tablet pairs per week at a cost of £12.66. With Soft and Easy you would use 3 sachet pairs at a cost of £9.19
Algae growing in a swimming pool is a perenial problem for the swimming pool owner here we will examine the 4 most popular ways to get rid of it. These are
As we will see some of the above can be used to kill algae and some are only useful to prevent it forming in the first place. Algae can be introduced to the pool by rain, falling leaves, wind or even bathing suits transfering algae from one body of water to another. Planktonic clean water algae float on the surface of pool water while other types will attach and grow onto the pool floor or sides. Many factors affect the development and growth rate of algae. Water temperature, sunlight, pH, mineral content and lack of chlorine residual of the pool water will all help to encouage algae development.
Chlorine.
Chlorine gets a bad press but since it was discovered that chlorine kills germs its use as a sanitiser in drinking water has saved millions of lives worldwide. Chlorine is the only chemical that acually kills algae. It acts in the same way as setting fire to the algae, it oxidises it. When you have a bloom of green algae in your pool then by far the best thing to do it to blast it with a shock dose of unstabilised chlorine. What is not used up in killing the algae will be burnt off by the sunlight.
Copper
Copper does not kill algae it disrupts its metabolism and stops it reproducing. Copper can be introduced in to the water in two main ways as a chemical or by an ionizer. Too much copper can cause stains on concrete pools so chemicals that contain copper also contain a chelating agent, a stabiliser, that does not allow too much copper in to the water at any one time.
Quats and Poly Quats.
Quat is the short hand term for a family of chemicals called quaternary ammonium compounds. Again they do not kill algae they disrupts its metabolism. Quats are short lived and you need to keep adding them to the water to keep algae at bay. They are a cheap chemical but they affect the surface tension of the water and cause it foam, foaming is perfectly normal but many pool users don’t like it. A high level of Quat will kill off an algae bloom but even so chlorine is still better for this so quats are usually used at lower levels as a preventative. Poly Quats or polymeric quaternary ammonium compounds are long chains of Quats and although they are more expensive they last longer and don’t cause foaming of the water. These are marketed as Long Life Algicides and are the popular form of Algicide in liquid form.
Phosphate Removers
All of the above chemicals act by meeting the algae head on and killing it. Phosphate removers act in a more subtle way. Algae must have phosphates present to be able to grow. Remove phosphates from the water and the algae are starved to death. Compounds of Lanthanum are used to react with the phosphate and precipitate it out where it is picked out by the filter.
All of the above methods are good at killing or preventing algae and you can mix and match any of them or even use all four methods.
PoolStore’s recommended non-chlorine alternative is Bayrol Soft and Easy. For a comprehensive article on all the various non-chorine alternatives read our help and advice section on the main website. We like the Bayrol product because it is easy to use but it has a few shortcomings and this article will explain them.
Firstly let’s just re-cap on why you put chemicals in your pool. Two reasons. (1) to kill bacteria. (2) to kill or prevent algae. Bacteria and algae are living organisms, organic material and the way to kill them is to oxidise them. Oxidising organic material is the same as if you set fire to it. When you burn something it reacts with oxygen from the air and becomes something else, in the case of bacteria being oxidised it becomes dead.
So to kill bacteria you must add an oxidising chemical to the water and the favourite chemical to do this the world over is chlorine. But if you don’t want to use chlorine you could use a peroxide type chemical. The best known peroxide is hydrogen peroxide, used as rocket fuel and to bleach hair. In swimming pool chemicals they come in the form of persulphates and one of the two sachets in soft & easy contains a persulphate oxidiser that does a very good job of killing bacteria. Persulphate oxidisers are also know as Active Oxygen.
Although peroxides are a good oxidiser for killing bacteria, algae is a different matter. Peroxides are not a strong enough oxidiser to kill algae. Fortunatly there is more than one way to kill algae. One way is to add a chemical called a poly-quat to the water. The other sachet in Soft & Easy contains a poly-quat to attack the algae because the peroxide can not do it.
The problem that Soft & Easy has is that if you get an aggressive attack of algae the poly-quat part of it can not cope with the influx of algae and before to long your pool will start to look green. Algae reproduce at an alarming rate and if your pool is green you have live algae and need to kill it straightaway. The only way to kill algae quickly is with a shock dose of unstabilised chlorine. Provided you put enough in, the chlorine will kill the algae in hours and what is not used up in killing will be burnt off by the sun.
So it is not at all uncommon for a pool treated with Soft & Easy to go green from time to time so you will need to have some shock chlorine in reserve to kill off any algae that the copper can not cope with.
 Shock (unstabilised) Chlorine |
 Bayrol Soft & Easy |
So you have bought an above ground pool for the garden, you have errected it and filled it with water – what now?
Well, first of all jump in and enjoy it! But you will need chemicals to keep the water clean and maybe you will want to warm the water up as well. This article will tell you what you should get.
Firstly when we say above ground pool for the garden we mean this sort of thing.
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 An Intex 16ft round Ultra Frame Pool |
 An Intex 18ft Easy Set Pool |
A pool with its own filter pump and paper filter cartridges. Although the pools above are the bigger type the advice here applies just as well to a pools down to 8ft round.
Keeping it clean
You are going to need to put chemicals in the water to keep it clean. The easiest way to treat the pool with chemicals is just to drop a floating dispenser in the water. The Ficlor 5 Bouy is ideal. Turn the lid until the holes line up for your size of pool, drop it in the water and that is it. Take it out when you swim, put it back in when you have finished. Inside the 5 bouy are two types of chlorine and a clarifier to kill bacteria and algae and help the filter keep the water clear and clean.
The 5 bouy is ideal for the smallest pools up to about an 18ft round pool. From about a 15ft pool up to the biggest garden pools available you might want to put multifunctional granules in the pool. The granules come in 5kg tub and one tub should last a whole season. The granules contain chlorine to kill bacteria, an algicide and a clarifier to keep the water clear and clean. You will have to test the water to find out how much chlorine is in there and for that you need some 3 way test strips. They also test for pH (acidity) and alkalinity. For a small pool you don’t need to worry too much about the other two. Putting chlorine in a pool is a bit like putting petrol in a car, when the fuel gauge is low you put more in. Test your pool every day and when the reading is low put more chlorine in.
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 Multifunctional Chlorine Granules |
 3 Way Test Strips |
 Fi-Chlor 5 Bouy |
Keeping it warm
Left alone the water in your pool will warm up and cool down each day with the warmth of the day and the cool of night and as the weather generally gets warmer so will the pool. If you want warmer water than nature gives you then the first thing to buy is a solar cover. This is made with bubbles to make it float on the surface, it insulates the water and has a greenhouse effect of letting the sun’s ray penetrate to warm the water but retaining the heat at the same time. A good solar cover will keep the water about 3 to 5c higher than it would have been without one but the water temperature will still rise and fall with day and night and warm and cool weather.
If you want your water to always be warm no matter what the weather then you will have to have a heater as well as a solar cover. For pools up to 12ft this is quite easy. You can buy the Intex 3kw heater or the better quality Elecro 3kw heater. 3kw is as much as you can run from a plug socket in the wall so the 3kw heater is a popular size. If your pool is bigger than 12ft then you should buy the 6 or 9kw heater. These have to wired in by an electrician. Above 9kw you will struggle to have enough electric capacity in your house for a bigger heater. Once you get in to the realms of the 12ft x 24ft you should be thinking about a heat pump. These things consume less than 3kw and so can be plugged in to the wall but they generate up to 12kw of heat. Although they are much more expensive than an Elecro heater they will pay back in electricity savings in two years or less.
 Intex 3kw Heater |
 Elecro Heater 3 to 12kw |
 Ecowarm Heat Pump |
See the next article for how to connect a heater to the flexible pipe of your pool (if there is no article below this then the link to it is above the title of this article).
Intex make great above ground swimming pools, the best on the market, which is why PoolStore only sell Intex pools but the pipes that come with the pools are a non-standard type and if you ever want to connect any non-intex item to your pool, like a heater for example, you will have to change from the Intex pipes to standard swimming pool pipes. This article will help you to do that.
Intex pools pools have two sizes of pipe. 1.25 inch for their smaller pools and 1.5 inch for their bigger pools
 Intex 1.5 (inch and a half) pipe |
 Intex 1.25 (inch and a quarter) pipe |
 standard swimming pool 1.5 inch pipe |
Standard swimming pool pipe is 1.5 inch class C ABS pipe and is usually white. There is also PVC pipe and that is usually grey in colour. Because pool pipes are 1.5 inch it makes it very difficult to attach the 1.25 inch pipe work to it but the 1.5 inch pipe is fairly easy.
What you need is a 1.5 inch hose tail. There are two types, threaded and plain
 Plain inch and a half hose tail |
 Threaded inch and a half hose tail |
The hose tail will push fit in to the cut end of the intex pipe but it will not be water tight. You can put a jublilee clip on it but because of the ridges in the Intex pipe it will not squeeze down tight. It will need to be sealed with a bathroom type mastic sealant.
Having got the Intex pipe on to the hose tail you can now connect to standard swimming pool pipe and connections. You can screw in to a female thread with the threaded hose tail or glue on to any plain ended fitting with the plain hose tail.
For example if you were installing an EcoWarm heat pump, they have 1.5 inch female threads on their inlet and outlet. We would recomend putting a threaded union in to the heat pump and then glue the plain hose tail in to the plain end of the union. Then you can unscrew the union at any time to isolate the heat pump.
threaded socket union
Swimming is still number one in England!
Swimming is still England’s most popular participation sport with nearly 3.26m people regularly getting in the pool – almost 1m more than those playing football.
The number of people swimming once a week has increased by nearly 40,000 from the last quarter results according to Sport England’s Active People survey.
The Active People Survey 4, carried out over a twelve month period to April 2010, shows that 7.72% of people are going to their local pools and swimming for 30 minutes or more at least once per week.
Anne Adams-King, the ASA’s Director of English Programmes, believes this is a positive step. She said: “Although England has a great army of armchair fans, we need to encourage people to stay active.
“These figures show some further progress in getting people into the pool, despite the fact during the survey period there were significant challenges with simply getting around due to the weather!
“We feel we have turned the corner now and we have begun to engage with people who see the benefits of a more active lifestyle to health and wellbeing.
“This has been a massive team effort and we have been supported by both Sport England and British Gas in understanding challenges around marketing and communicating to both the industry and people.
“However, we have still a long way to go in changing the culture and customer experience in swimming but with the support of the pool operators – who are all now fully engaged – we will continue to grow the market and achieve our goals.”
Solar Pool Heating – the pros and cons
Heating a swimming pool using solar energy has always been a good idea, free heat from the sun is always preferable to a large gas or electric bill, but just how good are the solar heating products available?
If you really want the best solar heating there is then you need the vacuum tube type heater. They are typically £5,000 to 10,000 per installation so we will not dwell on that type in this article.
For the typical domestic owner of a small to medium size pool who is on a reasonable budget there are two main options. The rubber matting type and the new solar pods type. The biggest problem that faces these type of solar swimming pool heaters is that they don’t have a thermostat. You cannot say “I want my pool to be 28C, I’ll just set this dial to 28C” and sit back and two days later the pool is at 28C and it stays at 28C all season long. With solar heating you get what the sun gives you. If it decides to shine then you get 28C but if it decides to stay behind the clouds you get 20C or 15C. If it is important to you that the pool water stays at a constant temperature then solar heating alone is not for you. You will need a back up source of heat and that will mean paying for it.
Nature likes equilibrium. If something hot is surrounded by something cold the hot thing will give up its heat until they are both the same temperature. Given enough time a large mass of water, like your swimming pool, will reach the same temperature as its surroundings. This is a major problem in the Middle East where pool water can naturally reach 35C. This is too hot and most pools will have a chiller on them to cool them down. No such problems in the UK where left alone a pool may get to 22C, 25C in a long spell of good weather, but typically 18C to 20C is what you would expect. For most people 20C is too cold but 28C is quite pleasant. 8C might not seem very much to have to warm the water by but it if the ambient temperature is lower than 28C, and that is probably 95% of the time in a British summer, then you are constantly having to add heat to the water while nature is constantly trying to take it back.
The problem we have with solar heaters is that when the sun comes out the weather gets warm anyway. So is the heat gain in the pool down to the solar heater or would it have warmed up anyway? We have carried out experiments on two pools, side by side and in full sun, one with a solar heater and a solar pool cover and one without. We sampled the temperature every hour and we found, not surprisingly, that the temperature fluctuated with day and night. From a daytime high of 23C the pools could drop to 18C at night but then back to 23C the following day. What we did find was that the pool with the solar heater and solar cover was always warmer than the other pool, usually by about 3C but more in sunny weather. In sunny weather the solar heated pool reached 29C in the middle of the day whilst the non-heated pool was 24C.
During the experiment the weather did turn cool and we had rain. At these times the pools fell back to 18C to 22C but in those conditions no one wanted to use the pool anyway. When the sun came back the temperature of the water rose to 26C and that coincided with a desire to swim.
Comparison of heated and non heated pools
So we think that, provided you accept the limitations in this climate, solar heating it is worth investing in. We would sum up the pros and cons as follows
Cons
The pool temperature will never be constant
The water will cool considerably at night and in a cloudy spell of weather
Pros
The heat you do get is free
Most people don’t want to swim in cloudy weather anyway, by the time the weather improves the water has warmed up again.
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| Solar Matting on a roof | Solar Pod |
Swimming Pool Safety Covers are not just for keeping your children and pets out of your swimming pool. You never know when a stray animal might wander in to your pool!
This pregnant donkey was very lucky because the pool was empty. Had she fallen in when the pool was full of water she would surely have drowned. The conventional cover could not hold her weight and ripped sending her to the floor of the pool.
The winter safety cover is made with double reinforced straps, extra strong spring fixings and brass floor connections making it strong enough to hold an elephant.
There are lots of ways to relax or have fun in an Intex Easy Set above ground swimming pool.
Here is one that we are not sure we would recommend you try at home.
From Swimming Pool News, April 2010:
The European pump manufacturing sector has been actively engaged with the EU in developing policies, standards and programmes to make an impact on carbon reduction.
The move has been made through the European Association of Pump Manufacturers. Pumps are responsible for some 5% of total electro-motive energy consumption, and the European pump sector is only too aware of the need to make a significant contribution to carbon reduction.
Under the EUP directive the Commission focussed first on high production volume products, identifying glandless circulating pumps up to 2500W and various centrifugal based water pumps as the initial targets.
Europump via its standards and technical commissions formed an energy joint working group, who with the co-operation of the Technical University of Darmstadt formulated carbon savings programmes and standards for all the associated pump types. The work on the circulators has now been completed with new and tough efficiency improvements due to come into force in 2013 and 2015 respectively. The changes will require massive production investment by the pump sector largely due to a technology shift, which will require a move toward permanent magnet motor technology and variable speed controls. At the same time the EU approved new energy targets for the majority of electric motors fitted to pumps.
Europump are continuing to negotiate with the EU on the water pumps, where their ‘house of efficiency’ scheme is expected to be used in the removal of least efficient products. They are also working toward the development of extended product and systems standards, where the potential for significant carbon reductions are best obtained.
The EU have now informed Europump that Swimming Pool pumps are next in-line, and it is likely that the programmes and standards being developed by Europump will be adapted to fit products in this sector.
The time is fast approaching when pumps fitted to swimming pools, like those used in domestic heating systems, will face stringent efficiency design standards, along with the need to adopt extended product control and monitoring equipment, and to be applied to efficient system design.
The British Pump Manufacturers Association have as the UK members of Europump been at the forefront of the European energy programme; providing experts, secretariat, and working group chairmen all overseen by the BPMAs representative on Europump Council, Ken Hall, Managing Director of Calpeda Pumps, who has been the President of Europump for the past two years. The BPMA is also in negotiations with the UK government in respect of the EUP directive and UK specific legislation.
We are often asked about converting a concrete swimming pool to a liner pool, this article will discuss what is involved in making such a change.
It is not unusual for older, concrete built swimming pools to crack and develop leaks. Often the cost of repairing the leaks is so high that owners consider lining the pool with a vinyl liner to seal the leaks. Concrete pools are often painted with water proof paint and this is a job that needs renewing every 3 to 5 years and the desire to do away with the job of painting is another reason why owners consider converting to a liner.
It is not impossible to convert a concrete pool to a liner pool but is does involve a fair bit of work and it is not easy to get a perfect job. The first thing to know is that the pool shell fittings will all have to be replaced. That is the main drain on the floor, the skimmers and the inlets. This is because in a liner pool the shell fittings have a removable face plate with a pair of gaskets behind them to seal the liner around the fitting. You could compare this to wall-papering up to a light fitting. You take the face plate off, cut the paper around the fitting and cover the cutting with the face plate to make it look tidy. It is the same with a pool liner only it has to be water tight. So you will have to get out a pnumatic drill or hammer and chisel and break out those shell fittings back to the pipe behind them, cut the pipe and install new, liner compatible fittings. Then you will have to make good the holes you made getting the old ones out. In the case of the skimmer you will probably have to take the coping stones up and relay them.
The cost of the new shell fittings is not that high in the big scheme of things, about £100 for a skimmer, £10 for an inlet and £30 for a main drain. The main cost here is the labour if you dont do it yourself. It would take a day or two for one person to change these fittings and make good.
The next thing you will need to do is install a “liner lock” to the top of the pool. The liner has a beading welded on to it and that beading clips in to the liner lock at the top of the pool. Liner lock is about £1 per foot and needs to be firmly fixed with masonary screws. The liner will cover over nearly all of the liner lock and you will not notice it afterwards. If your pool has square corners you should round them off to a six inch radius either with sand and cement screed or a purpose made corner insert. These are about £100.00.
It is a good idea to puncture the floor of the pool to make it non-water tight. Liners can leak from almost anywhere and if the water gets behind the liner it it better that it soaks away in to the ground rather than build up between the liner and a water tight shell forming a bubble.
If the concrete pool has steps then your problems are greater. Whilst it is theoretically possible to make a vinyl liner with steps in it our advice is don’t do it. You will never get a good fit, the liner will not sit back neatly to the back of the treads and there will not be enough weight of water to hold the material on the top step down. If you have concrete steps you have two main options. One is to take them out and replace them with a fibreglass step unit. They are designed with a face plate to seal a liner to. They are not cheap though. The step unit will probably cost more than the liner. A typical 4ft radius semi-circular step unit is about £1,600. That is just for the steps, of course. You still have the labour cost to break out the old ones and install the new ones. The other option is to break out the steps and make good the wall to have a simple rectangular pool and use a ladder to get in and out. A ladder is about £200.00. You could seal off the steps and put a fibreglass corner step unit in, these cost a little less at about £1,400.
So having converted your shell to accept a liner you now have to buy a liner and have it installed. This is where PoolStore come in. You can see our prices by putting your pool dimesions in to our cost calculator by following this link. You can peruse our choices of colours by clicking this link. We offer a nationwide liner installation service. When you are ready to buy your new liner we are here to help.
So, you have bought an above ground pool, probably an Intex type pool, that sits on your lawn. You have filled it with water, connected up the filter pump and you and your family are all ready to climb that ladder and step in. But then you hear “it’s freezing cold! I am not going in that!”.
Sound familiar? You need a heater. In this article we will discuss the various options for heating a garden above ground pool. We are talking about the type of pool like the one pictured below, you can buy them from us or from Argos, Toys r us, B&Q that sort of thing. Typically 8ft to 18ft round with a combined paper filter and pump.
If your pool is in the 8ft to 12ft bracket then brace yourself: The heater is going to cost more than the pool. Infact regardless of how big your pool is, if you want a really good, efficient heater it is going to cost way more than the pool. We will not be discussing solar heating systems in this article, we’ll talk about that in another article.
So let’s start from first principles. If you get a cold drink and a hot cup of tea and leave them both on the table for an hour what happens? The cold drink gets warm and the hot drink gets cold. The liquid warms up or cools down to the ambient temperature surrounding it. It is exactly the same with your pool. The only difference is your pool sits there day and night so whilst it may warm up some in the day it will cool down at night. So if you do nothing the water will reach the average day/night temperature for the time of year. In a typical british summer that is about 17C (63F), not especially warm.
The first thing you should do it buy a solar cover. Even the cheapest type will help but a good quality 400 micron solar cover will help the sunshine to warm water and also help keep the heat in during the colder nights. Using a solar cover should add at least 2C maybe up to 6C to the temperature. That will bring it up to about 19 to 23C (66 to 73C). 23C is not bad, on a really warm day most people would swim in 23C.
If the solar cover does not warm it enough for you then the next stage involves forking out for heater of some sort. There is a big barrier that affects your choice and that is the fact that from a 13amp plug socket in the wall you can only run a 3kw appliance. 3kw heaters are a very popular choice for that reason – you do not need an electrician to wire it in. You plug them in and connect them up and away you go. This is great but unless your pool is 10ft round or smaller you will not get the pool very warm. A 3kw heater will be OK on a 12ft pool but don’t expect anything over 25 or 26C in normal summers. Intex make a cheap 3kw heater. At £69.00 it is good value but it is not hi-tech, it has no thermostat but it will warm up a small pool. Elecro’s 3kw heater at £200.00 is a much better piece of kit.
If 3kw is not enough to heat your pool, i.e. your pool is bigger than 12ft round then you have two main choices. If you are happy to get an electrician in then get a 6kw or a 9kw direct electric heater. Elecro are by far the best manufacturer of these heaters. 9kw will heat a pool up to 18ft round. Bear in mind that when running a 9kw heater and assuming day rate electricity of 13p per unit it will cost £1.17 per hour to run. They typically need to run for 4 to 6 hours per day to maintain the temperature. In a 150 day season your lecky bill could be over £1,000.00. Every season. You will not save electricity by having a smaller heater, it will cost the same and just take longer to heat the pool.
Don’t fancy the idea of paying £5,000 in electricity over the next 5 years? Then a heat pump is what you need. An Ecowarm EW10 gives up to 9.5kw of heat, but it only draws 1.9kw in electricity. It can plug in to the wall socket, no need for an electrician. At 25p per hour to run your lecky bill for the season should be more like £250.00. So what is the drawback? Well, the EW10 costs £1,200.00 to buy but with a saving of £750 per season it pays back after 1 year.
“£1,200 for a heater, the pool only cost £300!” I hear you say. Yes, that is quite right. Heating up a large volume of water is not a cheap and easy thing to do.
Click the links below to see the products discussed in this article:
Heat pumps are without question the most efficient way to heat a swimming pool. They suck heat out the air and put it in your swimming pool at up to 600% efficiency.
But they have their limitations and they are particuarly noticable in the spring. This article was written on 19th April 2010. Yesterday the temperature reached 21.4C at about 4pm, perfect weather for your heat pump you might think. Well, yes, but at 6am that morning the temperature was 3.0C. It bearly got above 4.5C all night. That is cold! Too cold for a heat pump. If it does not will freeze up and wait to defrost then it will be working at a COP of about 2 or 3 so the biggest and best heat pumps like the Nirvana M40 will only put about 8 or 12 kw in the pool.
Cold temperatures are a double whammy for pool owners. Not only will your heat pump struggle but the poor old pool which may be at 20 or 25C by now will only have a sheet of plastic between it and air at 3C or 4C for hours on end. Even with the heat pump on all night the pool will still be colder in the morning than it was the night before.
So if your heat pump is not making much head way in April or early May do not be surprised. The rule of thumb for best heat pump performance at night is “would you go out in a short sleeved shirt?” By this we mean if the night is warm enough that you could wander around in short sleeves for a while without feeling cold then your heat pump will be fine. If you feel chilly in short sleeves or would not contemplate going out there without a jumper on then your heat pump will not like it much either.
If your heat pump has reverse cycle defrost you can forget most of the above. They will work down to lower temperatures but even at the lower temperatures you still only get 2 to 3 as a COP but since they are mostly used on indoor pools they don’t have the cold air temperatures next to the pool to deal with and should cope easily enough.
Fi-Clor are to make a change to the labeling of their Superfast products to do away with the confusion between the 2.5kg and 4kg tubs.
Both tubs contain the chemical Calcium Hypochlorite but fi-clor have formulated it not only to be 78% strength (normal shock chlorine is 55%) but to rapid dissolve by just scattering on the water. These two improvements have made the product very popular and it is PoolStore’s best selling shock chorine.
However there has been a lot of confusion amongst customers because the label on the 2.5kg tubs says “Superfast Shock” but the 4kg tubs says “Superfast Granules”
Arthur Cox, Technical Sales Manager at Fi-Clor says “Fi-clor intend renaming all pack sizes of this product as Fi-Clor Superfast Shock Granules. The names Granules and Shock came about when the product was initially launched in 2000. This type of product had traditionally been used for shock dosing only, due to its relative insolubility, but following the development of Superfast, we wanted to promote it for regular day to day disinfection. We therefore felt that naming it as a Shock product would limit the sales potential in this particular application area. Also, the smaller pack was better suited to giving instructions for shocking a pool without having to actually weigh out product i.e. roughly half the pack (1.25kg) for the average domestic pool. 10 years on from the launch, things have moved on, the market has matured and many pool owners have bought the larger pack for both regular disinfection and shock dosing”
