Hello Sir,
I’m an avid SurvivalBlog reader. I noticed that in your latest book (“How to Survive the End of the World as We Know It” [1]) you mention avoiding any type of pool shock containing ingredients other than “Calcium Hypochlorite” . While searching around for calcium hypochlorite I couldn’t find it at my usual shopping locations and started searching around about “Sodium dichloro-s-triazinetrione” and “Trichloro-s-triazinetrione” as they seemed to be available in abundance in my area.
My local Sam’s Club had the following types of “Pool Shock”:
1.) Sodium dichloro-s-triazinetrione hydrated 99%
Available chlorine 55.5%
50 pound bucket of granules = $105.48
2.) Same as above labeled “quick dis shock”
A box containing 24 one pound pouches = $57.34
3.) Also present were 3″ chlorinating tablets (Trichloro-s-triazinetrione 99%) But I have found no data about their safe use.
Available chlorine 90%
40 pound container = $91.87
While asking around about the possible use of these chemicals for water treatment, I was given this link [2] that contains directions regarding the use of dichloro-s-triazinetrione for drinking water treatment. Dichloro-s-triazinetrione, in it’s 99% pure granular form, will purify a 55 gallon drum of water with only a 1/4 teaspoon of product. Provided that the water to be treated was somewhat pre-filtered, that equals up to 4 million gallons of treated water from one 50 pound bucket!
I was leery to accept that dichloro-s-triazinetrione was a suitable chemical for treatment of drinking water at first, but I have since discovered that the new style of water purification tablets sold by CampingSurvival.com [3] also use dichloro-s-triazinetrione as their listed active ingredient.
Hopefully you or maybe some of your readers with knowledge about sodium dichloro-s-triazinetrione could add to or further clarify this chemicals ability to be safely used for drinking water treatment. The ability to purify millions of gallons of water out of a 50 pound bucket is too good of an opportunity to pass up if it is indeed feasible! Granted, the bucket price is $105.48 (that may be pretty steep for some folk), but it would sure allow for a healthy margin for charity use!
Your brother in Christ, – Chris in West Virginia
JWR Replies: I’ll defer to the knowledge of someone with a chemistry degree, on that question.