How Old Is Your Bleach?
Wow, my eyes have been opened, about bleach that is! One of the things I stocked up on before my move was Clorox bleach, mainly for use in disinfecting and cleaning, but also as a water purifier if need be, well I just found out that bleach has a very definate shelf life, it’s 6 months, yes, I said 6 months! It is recommended that you replace or rotate your liquid bleach every 3 months. That’s so scary because I have 3 or 4 large jugs of bleach that I haven’t even opened yet, these were purchased before December, now it’s September, so it seems that my supply of bleach may not be as strong as I thought it would be.
Fortunately, there is an alternative, you can get powdered bleach used in pools, it’s calcium hypochlorite, also known as pool shock. If you do this, be sure to get the kind that has no extra additives, you don’t want any added algicides or antifungals in it.
I haven’t tried this, I can only assume it’s safe to use like this, at least as safe as using liquid bleach. I did a search for calcium hypochlorite and potable water, I have learned that some big city water treatment processing plants are switching from sodium hypochlorite (liquid bleach like Chlorox) to calcium hypochlorite, so it seems to be safe to use in this manner. You will need to get the granular form, not the tablets.
Using calcium hypochlorite is cheaper too, a one pound bag can treat up to 10,000 gallons of water, and in the dried form, it should last quite a long time. I will be looking for calcium hypochlorite when I go back to my previous stomping grounds in a few weeks, I’ll be stocking up on some things that I didn’t know I would need at the time when I moved out here.
Here are the sources where I got this info, check them out:
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September 5, 2008
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