I can’t find the thread where someone mentioned bleach decay and how their bleach wasn’t quite strong enough, but this may be helpful to those not running chem tanks.
I bought a handful of 6 and 7 gallon black buckets from Uline. They take the same bed space as a 5 gallon, but your capacity just gets taller. The lids have rubber seals, and pops on to a rubber filler neck.
Perfect for dropping a draw tube in and filling with a funnel if you need to. You can even fill it with specific mixes if you’re so inclined just make sure it’s labeled.
It’s also really nice for pumping out of into your chem tank if you need more than 12 or 18 gallons. If you have two pumps it’s even better. I rarely more than my 35 gallon chem tank holds in a week and I imagine that’s the case with most small outfits similar to mine so I mostly just downstream from the black bucket.
As far as weak SH, I take mine out of the white bottles almost immediately and store it in these black buckets and haven’t really had any problems.
The only time I had a problem was trying to use SH that had sat for the winter. I split it between two buckets and topped it off with the 12.5% pool shock from Menards and it seemed to work just fine after that.
I don’t know if it got me to the 10% I like, but it worked until I finished it off.
We do the same thing but I would get rid of those since they are black. Draws heat without them being vented who knows whats happening inside those containers. Second thing is with them being black you never know how much detergent your working with.
These are the ones I use. Your able to see your level of detergent and I take a razor and cut a cross in the fill cap for ventilation.
I agree about not knowing how much is left, but generally they’re easy to tell by weight. I always go back and swap the draw tube into a 5 gallon bucket of fresh water to clean the injector and give it a lift.
It’s also a dead gives away when you go immediately from suds to no suds.
As far as heat, it’s only in the heat long enough to get to the jobs typically. They rest of the time it’s in a climate controlled garage. Oh and for venting the white caps come off.
The gallon bottles come with vented caps. I can’t find anyone that’ll deliver a 55 gallon barrel for a reasonable price every 2 weeks. So every 2 weeks I go up to menards and buy 50-60 gallons and transfer it to my buckets for less than I can find it anywhere else.
I like straight 10% before the injector for most things. I rarely mix, but as of the last month I’ve been using 12% because I got a mountain of it for $2.99 at Menards. I couldn’t keep justifying the 55 gallon barrel after the 1st and only one. It was costing a lot more than $3/gallon and I don’t have the volume to justify buying more. I just can’t find anyone who will deliver the barrels for a reasonable cost unless I’m buying more volume.
That and I can’t find 10% sh anywhere this year. It’s all the 8.25% and that wasn’t the case last year.
I can’t wrap my mind around why. I use 2 gallons of 12.5% mixed with 3 gallons of water in a 5gl pail before the injector and so I’m delivering about 1% on the surface and at that ratio I knock out some of the nastiest mold you’ve ever seen. At my current ratio which is half of your ratio I am still smelling bleach from 15 yards away and taking super precautions not to kill plants. You are delivering twice that amount to the surface. You’re not worried that you’re going to damage something or that you’re wasting money on an unnecessarily strong mix?
Maybe he’s got a crummy injector? I was using a spare injector awhile ago, and it wasn’t drawing nearly as much as I was accustomed to. Swapped out for a GP hi-draw, and what a difference
That could be. The first time I used 12.5% I mixed it backwards at 3 gl SH to 2 gl water and toasted a bunch of plants, and that was only a 7.5 mix which put 1.5% on the house.
No. I stopped presoaking 6 months ago. My injector is 15 to 1. I get good results and my dwell time is about 10 minutes. I use almost half of the bucket on most houses. 2.5 gallons so about what your mix is.
Stucco, I’ll X-jet, but everything else I DS. No problems.
I just did 20 apartment buildings with 5 to go and only used 4 gallons on the double buildings. 10-15 is mind boggling to me, but machines are weird man… all a little different.
I don’t know where you are located but here in TX WalMart sells 2 gal packs of 10% for 3.66 each in the pool section… I also made a deal with a local paint supply store to carry bleach for me. The deal I made was that I would buy it by the pallet if they would store it and could pick it up as I needed it. That allowed me to have climate controlled storage without having to use my space. Their corporate HQ told them they couldn’t store it anymore but that they could sell it to me at the reduced price all the time. Total win for me. My point here is ask people you do other business with if they will order in what you need. I negotiate almost everything to get my costs down.
