Letter Re: Sodium Hypochlorite Liquid

Dear Hugh,

I recently came across some Sodium Hypochlorite liquid at the big orange box store. It is 10% solution for swimming pools. It is packaged in one gallon plastic containers with two bottles to the box. The regular price was eight or ten dollars but they had it on clearance for $1.83. I have seen people talk about using this stuff in powder form for purifying water and I’m wondering if the liquid will work the same or if it is too hazardous and troublesome to store and maintain. It says 13oz per 10,000 gallons of water will give you 1ppm of chlorine so for 2 gallons of this you can do about 200,000 gallons of water…adjusted as necessary. It does say that it degrades over time and with sun exposure and that the caps are ventilated. Also not to store near acid. I’m almost thinking it is too much of a pain. What are your thoughts? God bless you and your and stay safe. – Nsane Prepper

HJL Comments: I would agree with your assessment of it being a pain to store. The liquid will have a much shorter storage life than the powder form and will cause much more corrosion on any metal stored in the same room as it. These are designed to be used in the same pool season that they are purchased. For our preps, we are moving away from storing volatile forms of chlorine anyway as chlorine generators are easy to purchase or build as well as maintain and the chemicals you store (usually table salt) are far more stable with much longer shelf lives. Two recent articles on this subject are: