Chemicals to keep your inflatable pool clean.
What many people are hesitant about when buying an inflatable pool is the use of chemicals to keep it clean. Of course this can be deterring and even a bit scary, but I'll show you in this short post that it's not at all hard to use or dangerous. I'll go through the two main chemicals, chlorine and bromine, used to clean pools, show you their pros and cons, and give you some advice on which equipment to use. So let's get to it, shall we?
Chlorine
If you've ever been to a pool before (and I suspect you have) you know about this chemical. It's the most common way of keeping your pool water clean and sanitized. The reasons for this, is that it's easy to handle, it's relatively cheap and it's a proven way of doing it for decades. For inflatable pools, there are generally three ways of adding chlorine to your pool. You have tablets, sticks or granular form to choose from. I would generally recommend either tablets or sticks for your pool. This is the easiest and most convenient way to add chlorine to your pool, and with a floating feeder you can set it up and leave it for a week without additional work. The granular chlorine has to be pre-dissolved in a bucket of water, and then added to the pool. This gives your more precise control over the chlorine level in your pool. However, you need to test your water and adjust the level of chlorine more frequently.
Bromine
Bromine is another chemical you can use to sanitize and keep your pool clean. It works the same way as chlorine does, but does not have the chemical odor that chlorine does. It also does better for people with sensitive skin, and does not sting your eyes. It's more effective than chlorine as it is more concentrated and you need to add less bromine than you would chlorine to a pool to keep it sanitized. However, the downside to bromine is the price. Lately there has been coming cheaper bromine into the market, and that's great, but the price is still higher than the one for chlorine.
Equipment
I would advice you to start out small. Buy a floating feeder and a small package of either bromine or chlorine. I use chlorine myself and I started out with a In The Swim 10 lbs bucket and a Kem-Tek 879 floating tablet dispenser. Both of which i have been very satisfied with. For bromine, any recommendation from me would be useless as I don't use it myself. I would suggest you check out amazon's assortment and read some reviews on their page. I also bought a Kem-Tek test kit that is really useful (works for both bromine and chlorine). It allows me to keep track of the water quality, and also makes me feel like I'm a laboratory technician.
I hope this article made you a bit more clear in regards on what to use to keep your pool clean and sanitized.