THE NON-CHLORINE PATH

BIGUANIDE THE ONE AND ONLY

You can get sick and die from water, yikes, but you already knew that.

Everyone has heard "It's a great place to visit but don't drink the water". 

Here is a great experiment.

Take a glass of water, place it outside for a week and then hand it to your child to drink.

You wouldn't do it, you're not crazy but take that glass and multiply it by a quarter million and that's the pool in your yard.

You know that water is going in their mouth for sure.

There are quite a few things that might swim in the pool with you if you don't put something in the water to kill them.

How do you know what is living in your pool?

You don't and you can't.

You would have to send a water sample off to a lab somewhere and have them look under a microscope to figure it out.

So how are you supposed to know your kids won't get sick from the pool water?

The only way is to test the water for enough approved chemical in the water to kill the nasty organisms.

You can't test for ozone, UV light or any other magic product no matter what the hype is.

If you can't test for it, you can't know, period.

Chlorine, Bromine and Biguanide are the ONLY three approved chemistry's that have tests available to verify that there is enough of the chemical in the water to kill organisms that might make you ill.

Since chlorine and bromine use the same test strips and are both "halogens", we are going to lump the two together and say that the third option, biguanide, is the only practical alternative to chlorine.

SO WHAT IS "BIGUANIDE"?

PHMB (Polyhexamethylene biguanide hydrochloride) is a sanitizer used in a whole bunch of things from hospital cleaners to cosmetics and is in some medications.

If you can sanitize a hospital surgical suite with the stuff, it will most surely take care of your pool water.

WHAT MAKES IT DIFFERENT?

Again, chlorine and bromine are both halogen chemicals. Biguanide is not.

It uses different tests, different shock and is delivered to the water differently.

Chlorine comes in liquid, granular and tablet form. Since chlorine leaves the water constantly just because the sun shines, there are plenty of devices designed to feed chlorine into the water on a constant basis to keep up with the loss.

Biguanide stays in the water for much longer periods, is a liquid only and needs no devices to deliver it to the pool. You simply walk out every week or two and pour some in.

ANOTHER SHOCKING DIFFERENCE

Removing bather waste and compounds from the breakdown of leaves and debris is the job of the oxidizer or shock portion of the chemical path you choose.

For chlorine, the most used shock is... more chlorine. This is the primary reason most people hate chlorine and want to reduce it. Adding more chlorine in many cases compounds the problem you are having, bleaches out your liner and causes it to become brittle, makes it dangerous to use the pool until the chlorine level comes back down and the list goes on.

The biguanide system uses a completely different oxidizer known as peroxide. Yes its the same stuff in your medicine cabinet but in a much stronger concentration.

Unlike adding more chlorine and more harsh chemistry, it's near impossible to add to much peroxide to the water.

The chemical shorthand for water is of course "H2O", two hydrogen and one oxygen atom. Peroxide is "H2O2" which is water with one extra oxygen atom. That extra oxygen atom is what makes it a great "oxidizer".

After peroxide does it's job, all you are left with is water, not a bunch of residual chemicals.

When chlorine does its work, it may turn into nasty compounds called "chloramines". These are the really bad disinfectant byproducts that are responsible for burning sensations in eyes and mucous membranes as well as a trigger for asthma.

Peroxide causes non of these issues.

WHY DOESN'T EVERYONE USE BIGUANIDE?