Anyone know how much water to dilute HASA pool chlorine to make household bleach for the wife?
The HASA bottle says 12.5% sodium hypochlorite. The bleach doesn't say.
How much do I dilute HASA chlorine to make household bleach?
Chlorox is 5%
Yes, mixing with equal part water will give typical household bleach concentration.
I was diluting 2 parts HASA with 1 part water but I was just guessing based on a pool calculator which said that 1 gallon of 6% household bleach gave a given pool 1.6 parts per million free chlorine as compared to a gallon of HASA 12.5% pool chlorine which gave that same pool 3.2 parts per million of free chlorine.
Since 1.6 goes into 3.2 twice, I was mixing 2 parts of HASA to one part water, but I wasn't sure if that was correct.
Do you think it should be 1:1 HASA to water or 2:1 HASA to water to mimic bleach?
When I tried to figure out the answer on my own, I found that the percent is different whether it's a percent by volume or a percent by weight or even a percent by "trade percent" (whatever that is).
All these different ways of measuring percent are confusing to me which is why I asked the question.
This reference said the MSDS for "Clorox Regular Bleach" says it's 6.15% sodium hypochlorite.
But that still doesn't tell me which percent that is (by weight? by volume? by available ppm of sodium hypochlorite?) so the numbers can be off by a huge amount since I'd be comparing apples to oranges to bananas (weight versus volume versus reactivity).
Then bear in mind it starts losing strength the moment it is made, based on how it is stored.
Look at it this way. Whatever good stuff that is in that gallon, if you add water so it's two gallons, then you'll have the same good stuff in twice as much water, making it half the strength that it was.
It doesn't really matter for your purposes if it's by weight or by volume. If you add water by weight to double the amount or by volume to double the amount, you're going to wind up with bleach that is half the strength. There are some negligible differences, but we're talking household bleach here, right?
The traditional gallon household bleach is 5%. The smaller HE containers frequently have 6.25%.
I took your advice and simply halved it.
Halving the HASA turned 8 gallons of 12.5% "trade percentage" (sodium hypochlorite by weight I think?) into 16 gallons of household bleach of roughly 6% to 10% by volume (I think).
The more dilute the sodium hypochlorite is, the *longer* it lasts in the jug.
How long?
I do not know.
It just may seem that way because it was pretty weak to start with ;-)
No. It's actually true. It's a chemistry thing. But I forget why.
I took chemistry so long ago, that I forget why, but the chem teacher drilled the decomposition concept into us at the time, just as he did redox reactions and intimate knowledge of s and p orbitals. :)
I'll look it up, but, I'm positive that the stronger the hypochlorite solution, the less stable it is - but I could also be wrong.
Googling, Wikipedia mentions that household bleach has sodium hydroxide added to make the solution more basic, which also slows down decomposition... " Household bleach is, in general, a solution containing 3?8% sodium hypochlorite and 0.01?0.05% sodium hydroxide; the sodium hydroxide is used to slow the decomposition of sodium hypochlorite into sodium chloride and sodium chlorate."
Further googling finds this CDC article
Luckily, this stops after 30 days (why, I don't know): "Sodium hypochlorite solution does not decompose after 30 days when stored in a closed brown bottle."
But I'll look it up further so that I can back up what I said.
BTW, you are correct.
This says Chlorox is 5.25%:
Turns out the keywords were "stability" and "decomposition". Add those to the search, and the information amount is astounding!
This PDF on stability says outright what I remember from chemistry: "Sodium hypochlorite at higher concentrations will have a faster decomposition rate. Conversely sodium hypochlorite at lower concentrations will have a slower decomposition rate."
Unfortunately, it also says that the metals in my tap water diluent will increase the decomposition rate.
Apparently there are five things that affect decomposition rate:
Basically:
This one goes into the rate math, which is 4 or 5 times faster:
Here's a guy who studied the shelf life of 5% bleach: http://143.107.206.201/restauradora/soda/sodaingl.html
5,00% at day 0 4,96% at day 30 4,77% at day 60 4,43% at day 90 4,32% at day 120 4,26% at day 150 4,07% at day 180 3,67% at day 210 3,51% at day 240 3,23% at day 270 3,16% at day 300 2,70% at day 330 2,36% at day 360 2,19% at day 390 1,84% at day 420 1,58% at day 450 1,32% at day 480 1,14% at day 510Roughly, it's half of what it was after a year in storage. It's still pretty good at about 3 months to 6 months.
HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.