When choosing a chlorine feed system for your pool, you’re faced with the following options: Liquid chlorine, granular chlorine, and tablet chlorine. Each of these types has their use, which we’ll go over below. Most people, however, choose tablet chlorine. You may be wondering why people choose tablet chlorine. If you choose to use tablet chlorine, what are the best pool chlorine tablets out there?
Safety Reminder For Chlorine Tablets
Before we get started, be sure to remember the cardinal rule of chlorine storage. Even when you have the best pool chlorine tablets, NEVER store your chlorine in the same place as your muriatic acid. This is the precise method used in World War 1 to produce lethal chlorine gas. It’s shocking (no pun intended) when I go into a supermarket in the summer and they’ll have a temporary ‘pool chemicals’ section where they store the two right next to or above and below each other, just waiting for a spill. Okay, now that we got that out of the way, let’s move on.
Benefits Of Liquid Chlorine
Liquid chlorine is much like household bleach, just a slightly higher concentration for pool use. You may want to use liquid chlorine in the instance where you need to shock the pool instantly, or on spring start up when you are adding chlorine for the first time. When first starting up and balancing the water, liquid can be ideal. This is because you are adding exactly the chlorine you need to add, and you can add exactly the stabilizer (cyanuric acid) you want to add, and so on.However, the day to day of lugging around jugs of the stuff gets old, and eventually you may want to look at one of the more concentrated sources of chlorine.
Chlorine Tablet Types
Enter granular dichlor chlorine. This is the most commonly used chlorine in acrylic spas as it doesn’t have a big impact on PH when added to the water. Dichlor granules also have cyanuric acid combined with the chlorine so there’s no need to add stabilizer to the water when using dichlor. However, the chlorine level in dichlor, while higher than that in liquid chlorine is far less than our third option, trichlor.
Trichlor chlorine is what you typically find in tablet form. While you can find dichlor in granules and sometimes in liquid form, trichlor is only found in tablets. Trichlor is a very powerful chlorine which is why it is popular in commercial applications and automatic residential feeders.
When using trichlor, you need to keep an eye on your PH. Trichlor tablets have the tendency to drop your PH considerably if you don’t keep an eye on it. In some parts of the country, like the Texas hill country, this is ideal. That’s due to the water coming out of the tap already having a high PH. Therefore, tablet chlorine does some of the PH control for you.
When looking at the various trichlor tablet options, you’ll notice they are all virtually the same. It is truly a commodity and you ought to buy the best priced trichlor tablet you can find, in the size tablet you need. There are however ways to determine your best choice which we’ll review below.
3 Best Pool Chlorine Tablets
The best pool chlorine tablets are priced right, and packaged well. Packaging is important as you need to prevent moisture from reaching the tablets. Furthermore, you also don’t want your tablets off gassing while in storage.
For the typical 3” tablets of trichlor our favorite is In The Swim chlorine tablets.
- Eliminate bacteria, algae, and other organic contaminants, keeping your pool clean and clear all season long.
- 99% Trichloro-S-Triazinetrione and 90% available stabilized chlorine.
These are always priced well, and are packaged in a screw off bucket. This makes opening and closing the bucket a cinch. Additionally, these are individually packaged so you aren’t hit in the face with the gasses from all the tablets whenever you open the container. Also, this individual packaging helps protect the tablets from moisture, preventing your bucket of chlorine from turning into a powdery mess.
For best pool chlorine tablets in 1” trichlor, our favorite is the In The Swim 1” tablets.
- 90% available stabilized chlorine and 98.6% Trichloro-S-Triazinetrione (TriChlor)
- Eliminates bacteria and prevents algae growth in hot tubs, spas, above ground or in-ground swimming pools
In this case the tablets are not individually wrapped, but the price is right and the same easy use container is included. Maybe you prefer a smaller quantity of chlorine to store. This is common when you have a spa for example. In that case, you may want to consider the HTH 42031 1″ Chlorinating Tablets.
- BENEFITS: Sanitizes and protects your pool water so you can enjoy swimming all season long; kills bacteria and algae with built-in algaecide
- USE: Place tabs in pool skimmer, floater, or feeder for simple, DIY pool care
These come in an easy to use container. It’s designed for you to never have to touch the chlorine itself. Just make sure you close the lid completely after every use. Also, you might find these tablets are the best for you to keep your spa or small pool in perfect shape.
Best Pool Chlorine Tablets Summary
Now you know the 3 best chlorine tablets on the market. Your choice will ultimately be determined by what size of tablets and storage you desire. Make sure to remember the safety lessons we included here too. Next, you should consider finding a chlorine dispenser.
