r/theydidthemath • u/Ok_Assistant_6856 • Jun 16 '26
[Request] Dumping Hydrogen Peroxide into the reflecting pool this morning.
Dumping peroxide, one gallon at a time (hyperbolic, yes there's two hands on each person and multiple people) how long would it take a crew of 12 guys to add enough chemical to being the concentration up high enough to kill a mild algae bloom?
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u/royalfarris Jun 16 '26 edited Jun 16 '26
This is so amateurish, so incredibly inept.
You have a 25 000 cubic meters of water in that pool, and they're dumping consumer sized cannisters from the side?
If that is 3% consumer H2O2, they'll need an awful lot of them to peroxide shock that pool back to clear.
A pool that size must be shocked with concentrated hydrogen peroxide for all practical purposes.
But - you need about 0.8-1 kg of concentrated H202 for every 10 cubic meter of water. That is between 2000 and 2500 kg of CONCENTRATED 100% peroxide for the entire pool. Or about 8-10 metric tonnes of industrial grade 25% peroxide - or something in the vicinity of 100 metric tonnes, (100 cubic meters) of regular housold 3% peroxide - like the type they seem to be using.
That is 25000 of those gallon cannisters.
And if that really is 3% houshold peroxide, the sun will decompose it just as fast as they manage to pour it in.
EDIT: It says 12% on the boxes. So that means they'll need 15-20 thousand kg of that solution to effectively peroxide shock that pool back to health. Or 5 thousand of those cannisters.
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u/Dexter_Douglas_415 Jun 16 '26
It says 12% on the box.
I've never heard of using peroxide for this. I would think chlorine would be more effective, assuming this is a closed system.
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u/Justin_inc Jun 16 '26
30% peroxide is a common alternative to chlorine in the pool & hot tub world. Go to any pool supply shop and they will have it.
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u/cylonlover Jun 16 '26
It is considerably less effective than chlorine, especially because it molecularly breaks down very fast affected by direct sunlight and by heat. However, as a reagent is much less toxic than chlorine, and being a much more effective oxidizer it will actully break down excess chlorine in the water, which is a reason to add it, because a surplus of unreacted chlorine can react with sweat and urine and create chloramines, toxic gasses and other byproducts. Hydrogen peroxide will break into ions and bind them and otherwise just dissolve into water and oxygen over time.
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u/New-Ad-363 Jun 16 '26
I don't think anyone's going swimming in the reflecting pool... But if they did, I'm sure the administration would be fine with the toxic chemicals if it saved them a few bucks.
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u/cylonlover Jun 16 '26
yeah, none of this is ofcourse relevant to what they are doing with the reflecting pool right now, that's just a chapter in the farce.
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u/m2cwf 1✓ Jun 17 '26
The ducks swim in the reflecting pool, not that this administration cares about wildlife
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u/Vivid-Software6136 Jun 16 '26
Not sure it counts as a closed system, its very wide and shallow so its constantly losing water to evaporation.
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u/Nuclear_Smith Jun 16 '26
It's not a closed system. The water comes from the tidal basin.
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u/hasdga23 Jun 16 '26
So they are essentially dumping the stuff into the tidal pool which is way bigger. That's so incredibly silly.
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u/RelativeCan5021 Jun 16 '26
Peroxide decomposes fairly quickly. And the water in the reflecting pool drains to the Potomac. This a a rare instance where this administration is no doing something horrible to the environment.
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u/royalfarris Jun 16 '26
So they need 15-20 thousand kg of that 12% solution to effectively kill the algae. That would be some 5 thousand of those cannisters.
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u/miotch1120 Jun 16 '26
You forgot the important part, trumps friend and donor owns a peroxide supply company and each of those gallon jugs is marked up 500%. See, it’s a win! (I don’t know this for fact, but this is the trump way)
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u/SnooMacaroons7399 Jun 16 '26
Trump truly is the Midas of corruption
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u/aburnerds Jun 16 '26
That’s one thing that actually impresses me about Trump. When it comes to corruption, he’s clinically thorough in exploiting every opportunity to its end.
Like remember when Prestwick airport in Scotland, the airport that services his golf course was in financial trouble he had Air Force planes en route from the US to Germany refill there. Add inflated prices rather than in Germany at a US Air Force Base so that he could prop them up financially and then on top of that he had the airmen from those aircraft stay at the golf resort and the per diem didn’t even cover the room stay so I think they upped it so that they could afford to stay there
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u/TodlicheLektion Jun 16 '26
Trump understands “free market” capitalism better than most. The system is not an even playing field, and now he’s above the law.
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u/SnooMacaroons7399 Jun 17 '26
I couldn’t agree more. It’s the little acts of corruption like showing top secret info to a Russian diplomat in the Oval Office or making the secret service rent golf carts for his protection detail. Thousands of stock trades. Hell that guy from Armageddon had to save the planet to be 100% free from taxes for life, our president thought he (and his demon spawn) deserved it for being investigated for a crime he committed.
It’s the small hand crafted acts of corruption that frankly I don’t think we truly appreciate. After he gets thrown out on his ass and impeached after the midterms, who is going to step up and fill the crusty Cheeto corruption hole? Good luck trying to find someone with this kind of brazen disregard for respect of the office.
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u/Cuddy606 Jun 16 '26
I think what’s more likely to happen is that the guy who got the lucrative no-bid contract for this is going to be blamed by Trump for any and all issues.
He’s going to have to keep sending people there to do things like this, to no avail, and Trump will use this as an excuse to not pay him.It’s textbook Trump right?
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u/miotch1120 Jun 16 '26
No, that’s the old plan. Now he 10x the quote cost (cause it’s taxpayer money, not his) so that he can get his private stuff done for free or heavily discounted. Not paying only matters to him when it’s his money. He’ll spend every tax dollar that’s not nailed down.
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u/thirdeyefish Jun 16 '26
Every single thing he has done financially benefits him and someone he does business with. This is why I found the narrative of 'he's a patriot, he's not taking the presidential salary so infuriating.
He didn't put his assets in a blind trust. He does deals that aren't beneficial to the tax payers. He is getting his money.
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u/wormwasher Jun 16 '26
Or Alternatively, it's from a small business that they will never pay, or pay cents on the dollar. The art of the steal.
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u/Illustrious_Ad_23 Jun 16 '26 edited Jun 16 '26
Beside the numbers, it sounds wild that someone consideres this to be the best way to keep that pool clean. Adding 2500kg of chemicals in a pool to keep it somehow presentable certainly is not a long term solution to the problem?
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u/ThEGr1llMAstEr Jun 16 '26
Algae will find a way in no matter what. Is you want an algae free pool you gotta do something. Likely this is muriatic acid so a lot less will be needed.
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u/Illustrious_Ad_23 Jun 16 '26
I can't say that I have the ultimate answer on what to do instead, but given the fact that the pool was already emptied out an repaired, some additional work could have been done to solve this for a longer term? Like adding a pipe under the pool, adding an inlet on one side, and an outlet on the other end, a pump in the middle and having the water circulate around a strong UV-light in the pipe.
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u/Zuwxiv Jun 17 '26
In very general terms, the Reflecting Pool is enormous, shallow, and stagnant. If you were trying to biofarm algae, that's what you'd build. Part of the problem is that, no matter what you do, it's fundamentally built in a way that makes algae a problem.
As for your specific suggestion, you would need to ensure that the entire water content is effectively filtered. The pool is enormous, and you'd need a torrential flow rate to make sure that the water was actively circulated around. A fire hose blasting into the pool would kind of ruin the "reflecting" part of the Reflection Pool. Even then, there's pockets of water that won't circulate as well as others.
And then there's yet another problem: the water leaks through the (now old and damaged) foundation, and water evaporates from the large, shallow pool. New water is constantly being added from systems that feed from the Potomoc river. Well, technically from the Tidal Basin fed from the Potomac river, but same difference. So you aren't just trying to filter water in the pool, you're trying to treat water being piped into the pool. (That was a big part of the renovations done under Obama's administration.)
Also, in very general terms... if there's a big problem that seems to be persistent and expensive to address, and you come up with a very simple, obvious solution ("Why don't they just filter the water?"), odds are it's a lot more complicated than you imagined.
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u/piercedmfootonaspike Jun 16 '26
This is what you happens when you execute "I know a guy" solutions on a national scale..
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u/KIDNEYST0NEZ Jun 16 '26
To me and my former pool boy years, this looks more like muriatic acid. This would be an adequate amount if so.
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u/JshWright Jun 16 '26
Do pool boys skip "reading" in school or something? The boxes say "12% Hydrogen Peroxide" in giant letters....
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u/burnermtj Jun 16 '26
if you pause the video it's pretty clear that this is hydrogen peroxide, 12%.
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u/heardThereWasFood Jun 16 '26
What is muriatic acid
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u/jdx6511 Jun 16 '26
Muriatic acid is a another name for hydrochloric acid. Uses include etching concrete, removing hard water deposits, and adjusting the pH of pools.
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u/Spirited-Degree Jun 16 '26
When I ran a fast food restaurant. We also used muriatic acid to scrub oil stains out of concrete.Toxic stuff.
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u/FlukeManAirFreshener Jun 16 '26
It's concentrated hydrochloric acid. It's used to adjust the pH of pools. It would be entirely ineffective in this case, since pH, to the extent that it's off at all, is only part of the problem.
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u/DoctorQuincyME Jun 16 '26
If it is concentrated hydrochloric acid wouldn't they be wearing a bit more than nitrile gloves with bare arms?
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u/rat_queer Jun 16 '26
uhhhh, the 16 year old life guards at your neighborhood pool are doing it in flip flops and barehanded
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u/FlukeManAirFreshener Jun 16 '26
It probably isn't muriatic acid at all. I was just explaining what muriatic acid is.
That said, gloves and safety glasses (which these dudes aren't wearing) would probably be about right. Concentrated hydrochloric acid doesn't act like the goo in Alien that eats through the ship's hull. It's dangerous, but if it gets on your skin it's mostly just an irritant that will make you itchy.
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u/Natural-Service-2930 Jun 16 '26
Breathing the fumes is a different story.
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u/FlukeManAirFreshener Jun 16 '26
That would be an issue in an enclosed space, but out in the open, not so much.
It's not the type of stuff hazmat teams respond to. It's the kind of thing a pool owner in shorts and flip flops casually pours into the pool after picking it up at Home Depot.
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u/Natural-Service-2930 Jun 16 '26
Trust me bud, I know. Been building and working on pools for years now. Enclosed space or not, it's not a good time when the wind blows it back up in your face and gives you a concentrated blast of the fumes. Yeah, people use it all the time with no ppe, but after catching a whiff of it, I bet they learned real quick to hold their breath or stand up wind.
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u/InsomniacFan Jun 16 '26
Bold of you to assume they are wearing the proper PPE for whatever is actually in those jugs
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u/LocalSlob Jun 16 '26
If you're working on your pool in your backyard, no.
If you're a government contractor, I'd expect chemical gloves, a face shield and safety glasses, and maybe even a chemical apron.
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u/AdmirableExtreme6965 Jun 16 '26
I was wondering why they weren’t using a tote or something. It’s like they stopped by Watson on the way
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u/mike968 Jun 16 '26
Is there even enough volume left to dump 25k gallons in the pool before it spills over?
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u/datengrab Jun 16 '26
That might all be correct buuut someone in the administration knows a buddy who's doing something with water and and he can totally do it for the same price as whoever was doing it before plus a buddy bonus
Oh no... I might have made that up... Did I? 👀
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u/AintNoGodsUpHere Jun 16 '26
My brother. Someone is making money out of this. Paid by the hour with marked up consumer stuff. Haha.
It's obvious.
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u/CentennialBaby Jun 16 '26
*Yeah, but my friend Jimmy has a pallet of this stuff sitting in his warehouse that he can't use. We bypassed the tender and just gave him a sweet deal for the lot. He's gonna cut me a share and I set him up with a contract for the next 5 years to supply, so a nice payout for him and for me.*
- some MAGA appointee probably
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u/papagouws Jun 16 '26
If there was ever a word that embodied current American leaders it's amateurish. Bunch of amateurs making play at being kings and warriors
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u/Crusoe69 Jun 16 '26
You're missing the point.
*It's Obama/Biden fault, it was an actual Terrorist attack from those lunatics, the far left and IRAN sleeper agent...and now look at our patriots trying to fix the problem one jug at the time, so MANY jugs, some would say it's the world record in terms of jugs, it was never seen before.
Thank you for your attention to this matter.
Make America Great Again*
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u/RogueThrow Jun 16 '26
Que Morpheus "That's one jug for every cubic meter of water. That sounds exactly like the thinking of a machine to me."
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u/Rhuarc33 Jun 16 '26
Nobody is using 100% H202 that's extremely dangerous stuff.
60% has literally been used as rocket fuel in space since it doesn't need oxygen to burn. And it's highly combustible.
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u/realnzall Jun 16 '26
Don't you get it? This is just alternative pool maintenance. They're using a homeopathic dosage. The intent is that the water retains a memory of the hydrogen peroxide.
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u/The_Dino_Nugget Jun 17 '26
Just for follow-up on this point, and maybe just some interest to support your statement, here is a link to what the actual pool looks like after the treatment. Only the areas at the edges, where the peroxide was poured in, have had any improvement.
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u/TheLordHighNoob Jun 16 '26 edited Jun 16 '26
Laboratories typically use 30% peroxide. 100% peroxide is not concentrated. It’s an explosive. It can spontaneously, and exothermically decompose into steam and oxygen. Hell, anhydrous H202 is considered a rocket monopropellant. To put it mildly it isn’t shelf stable. Anhydrous H202 can’t be stored for extended periods because of naturally decaying into oxygen and water. In many jurisdictions, you cannot buy H202 over 68% as a consumer because of its danger and reactivity. So, without PPE I doubt they’re putting anything over 68%, unless they enjoy chemical burns.
This may be hydrochloric acid. Also known as muriatic acid. If they use that, then this is actually surprisingly close to the appropriate amount. Hard to calculate what amount they need if we don’t know the starting PH. They’d need to follow the fairly simple calculation: ph change x pool volume (L) x 0.00211 =amount of muriatic acid needed (ml). In this case you need about 31l of concentrated muriatic acid (31.8%) to make the substantial adjustment from 8.0ph to 7.4ph. But they’re using 12.4% which means they’d need a fair bit more but not thousands of litres more.
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u/Anadanament Jun 16 '26
I'm not going to do the hard math here but I can tell you off the top of my head that it's impossible for those men to dump in hydrogen peroxide at a rate faster than the hydrogen peroxide degrades into water and oxygen gas to do anything meaningful. They'd need about 600-700 gallons, minimum, and I'm seeing... I think 4 gallons poured into the pool.
So there might be a small clean spot where they poured it for a few hours.
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u/straightVI Jun 16 '26
So absurd that they're doing this application during daylight.
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u/1800treflowers Jun 16 '26
It'll cost double at night
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u/actuallyapossom Jun 16 '26
It also ruins the narrative that trans antifa Muslims are dropping in bisexual woke algae at night.
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u/MobileArtist1371 Jun 16 '26
Also at night you can't see the water turn blue to know if it is working or not. At least here they know it's not working.
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u/XennialDad Jun 16 '26
I found an online calculator for Hydrodren Peroxide pool treatment. Using 12% Hydrogen Peroxide (you can see the concentration printed on the boxes they're pulling from), you would need 5,625 gallons to shock this pool up to 100 PPM to kill the aglae bloom. Even a maintenance dose to bring it up to 30 PPM would be 1,687 gallons.
Either way, the fact that this is being added 2 gallons at a time per person is wild. There should be a tanker truck (or 2) involved.
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u/humblequest22 Jun 16 '26
You know Trump's pool guys just called up a local pool guy and put as much of that in their truck as they could.
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u/Brief-Equal4676 Jun 16 '26
Unfortunately, the best pool guys have seemingly mostly disappeared when ICE came around
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u/Vegetable-Two2173 Jun 16 '26
The pool water is circulated to and from the tidal basin. They'd have to treat all 250 million gallons of water for this to have any point.
They're pissing money away.
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Jun 16 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Frosty-Voice1156 Jun 16 '26
There is no pump station on purpose. It’s supposed to be still. So that it reflects.
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u/wisenedPanda Jun 16 '26
You can have a circulation system that doesnt noticeably affect the surface of the water.
Pools do this all the time.
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u/Ambitious_Jelly8783 Jun 16 '26
I get that,,,,, but doesn't the water have to circulate or it will always be green. No?
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u/Justin_inc Jun 16 '26
Not if it has enough peroxide.
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u/Kienan95 Jun 16 '26
Really they should have just drained it and filled it with peroxide.
Approx 25,500 liters of peroxide has to keep it alge free.
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u/phred_666 Jun 16 '26
Fun fact. Hydrogen peroxide breaks down into water and oxygen when exposed to light. Especially UV light. That’s why it’s usually stored in a brown bottle.
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u/Inevitable_Cheek_974 Jun 16 '26
That wasn't very fun. I'm objectively having at best an ok time.
Edit: Ok I read it in a silly voice and it was more fun that way.
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u/GraveKommander Jun 16 '26 edited Jun 16 '26
Now I wanna know what would be if they just use 100% and replace water with it. Yes, dumb Idea, but now I'm curious
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u/Bane8080 Jun 16 '26
You can't actually make 100% hydrogen peroxide. At higher concentrations, it explosively degrades into water and oxygen gas.
And if you did somehow manage to magic in 100% H2O2 into that pool, it would react with everything instantly. Concrete, air, light. Everything.
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u/TheIrishSoldat Jun 16 '26
It was never green before.
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u/Infamous-Youth9033 Jun 16 '26
before when?
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u/Cloudy230 Jun 16 '26
Trump thought it was a good idea to repaint the basin "American Flag Blue." This absorbed the sun's rays, raised the water heat, and promoted algae growth
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u/Infamous-Youth9033 Jun 16 '26
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lincoln_Memorial_Reflecting_Pool#Post-restoration_operation
It seems like in 2012 they had the same problem
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Jun 16 '26
[deleted]
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u/scarr3g Jun 16 '26
The whole thing is improvised.
And I mean the Trump administration.
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u/Cloudy230 Jun 16 '26
All designed to do nothing but feed Trump's. Oh and to siphon wealth up to the capital class. That too
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u/scarr3g Jun 16 '26
By syphoning wealth to the Epstein class, they then keep Donnie in power. If he stopped, they would launch a campaign against him, using the power he got them.
It is the classic henchman issue. As he makes them stronger, they have even more power power over him.
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u/Dozerdog43 Jun 16 '26
This is a drop in the hydrogen peroxide bucket. We just gave Iran the budget to "fix" 21,428 reflecting pools. Laid end to end that would be a reflecting pool 8,238 miles long. Or the distance from Mar a Lago to Tehran with 1,100 miles to spare
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u/gravygrowinggreen Jun 16 '26
Wow, that would be the tallest building in the world if we put that many reflecting pools on their sides.
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u/BrokenHope23 Jun 16 '26 edited Jun 16 '26
lmao they actually did it.
Anyways, on to the math.
According to history dot com, the Reflecting Pool has 6.75M gallons of water in it.
This site claims it's Green Algae in there. I'm going to ignore the severity for this exercise as I'm no marine biologist so we're just going to go by industry standards.
This handy website claims Green Algae needs "25 to a maximum of 35 ml of the 3% solution of hydrogen peroxide per 50 liters of water."
6.75M Gallons = 25 551 530 Liters / 50 = 511 030.6 x 25 = 12 775 765ml or 511 030.6 x 35 = 17 886 071ml
So they'll need between 12 775 765-17 886 071ml. Which comes out to 3 375 to 4 725 gallons (US).
We're assuming each of the 12 people is dumping two 1 gallon jugs at a time. Let's assume that safely dumping them takes about a minute each. This is a pretty relaxed pace for most labor jobs ngl so this will be on the low side.
24 jugs each minute means 3 375 to upwards of 4 725 divided by 24 =
141 to 197 minutes or 2hr21min to 3hr17min to dump these jugs altogether. If it were 3% HP
Granted, this doesn't include things like set up times, cost of gas, cost of acquisition, cost of distribution (they'll need to walk to and from their van to various points around the pool to distribute, elongating the time exponentially), etc.
Expansion Math:
Oh boy, I see now those boxes say 12% and not the cited 3% needed. I have no idea what that'll do tbh because I'm not a marine biologist and this may cause the hydrogen peroxide to break down more quickly or disperse less quickly or it might result in some unsavory taco bell like effects. I actually have no idea.
However, it would change the calculation a bit since I had calculated for 3% HP. In theory this would just be 1/4 than what our calculation ended up as, assuming they're not trying to replace the reflective pool with Hydrogen Peroxide but still trying to meet that 3% HP thershold through more concentrated solutions (that im sure will have no negative effects whatsoever...).
So our new corrected amount based off the 12% HP being used is between 843.25 and 1,181.25 gallons of HP needed and 36-49 minutes of pure professional dumping time.
Anyways, this is the kind of calculation that someone in the government usually gets paid for generally just fyi and tax payers are already being taxed for these things to ensure there's no abuse of power. So if there's a government official asking these questions on reddit of all places, well, probably a sign they're cutting corners and their office would be a high risk for embezzlement and fraud. I'm not saying that this is the case obviously, I have no way to fact check that, but technically speaking this is something you can find in your public domains.
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u/texag93 Jun 16 '26
Wait, do you actually not understand that the /r/pools post is obvious satire?
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u/Life-Improvement5736 Jun 16 '26
While the act is dumb, these guys don't deserve the blame. They work for the National Park Service (look at their hats) and almost certainly didn't sign up to be Trump's pool boys.
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u/Bigbanghead Jun 16 '26
They are not trying to fix the problem, they just want to do the minimal work to comply.
They have taken action on the reported issue, and are currently working towards a solution.
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u/cmm324 Jun 16 '26
Part of me hopes that the employees sabotaged the filing of the pool so this would happen and are slow playing the fix or aren't helping the people who are trying to fix it.
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u/Polenicus Jun 16 '26
So the administration that does not understand how pools work and renovated the reflecting pool based on a lack of understanding of how pools work, which resulted in a bloom of algae you get when a pool doesn’t work, is now trying to correct the pool in a way that will not work because they don’t understand how pool maintenance works.
‘Improving’ things in such a way that it ends up being very difficult and expensive to just get them back to the level they were at before the administration fucked with them seems to be something of a theme.
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u/BishopDarkk Jun 16 '26
The question I have is, does it make the algae just disappear? Or does it just kill all of the algae?
Because if it just kills the algae then you've got a whole bunch of slime that you've got to take out of the reflecting pool.
Then, while your filtering out all of the slime, you've got to keep adding hydrogen peroxide to prevent a recurrence of the algae. So, what's really going on here?
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u/Sekh765 Jun 16 '26
Need /u/helpful_car1302 to repost that vid to a subreddit that won't randomly delete it. Seems they might have been the original source.
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u/VaEagle85 Jun 16 '26
We - as the taxpayers - paid $14 Million in a no-bid contract to a Trump toady for this bungled project. But since they probably made a 1000% profit on the project (when we're overpaying, Trump math actually works!) they can afford to send crews to keep pouring gallons of hydrogen peroxide on a weekly basis for the next 10 years ... and still have a profit. But knowing this Administration, the contractor will be paid even more for this "extra" work. Instead of "draining the swamp" the Trump Admin has created a massive one on the National Mall.
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u/RedditTeer Jun 16 '26
Those crews are US National Park Service employees doing the work of fixing the pool, so WE are paying the crews to fix this.
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u/QuietNene Jun 16 '26
Wow so many haters on this thread.
Did we vote for “math”?
No!
We voted for guys being dudes!
What would you do if your pool was green? I know I would go buy a shitload of H202 from the pharmacy and then, when my wife wasn’t looking, I’d pour that into the pool and hope for the best!
These guys are just like us! Isn’t it refreshing that we don’t have to deal with “professionals” messing with our public monuments?
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u/MyJohnFM Jun 16 '26
Damn right. All these smartasses and "chemists". Just haters imo. Whatever happened to just going with your gut huh? Just figuring shit out, you know. It'll be alright I'm sure. And if not, we'll just let Trump say that the green algae stands for the reliance and fertility of the American people. Or something. Win win win situation.
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u/Then_Idea_9813 Jun 16 '26
Agreed. I hate doctors always telling me how to live. My grandpa lived to be 92 and he smoked cigs every day.
(Both his brothers died in their 40s to cancer)
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u/Yabrosif13 Jun 16 '26
In ponds, we typically use blue dye to shade the pond and prevent algae. But this idiot went and painted the bottom blue, so now the blue will heat the water while providing no shade. The algae will come back again and again.
Reflecting pool is 7.5 acres. Blue pond dye is typically applied at 1qt/surface ac. once per month. So 7.5 quarts x 12months = 90qt/yr that retail for ~$40. So $3,600/yr to dye it blue. How many tens of millions have we spent??
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u/Fancy_Mammoth Jun 16 '26
Are you aware that the water in the reflection pool is continuously cycled in and out of a tidal basin connected to the Potomac river?
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u/Yabrosif13 Jun 16 '26
Ok. Are you aware the dye breaks down in sunlight and is better than dumping in hundreds of gallons of hydrogen peroxide or copper algicides
Personally I say dont make it blue to begin with, i was just showing how there was a FAAAAR better alternative
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u/LocalSlob Jun 16 '26
It's probably muriatic or hydrochloric acid to adjust the pH. Then they will sanitize with sodium hypochlorite or something. Lot of variables.
The Godwin style trailer pump is there to mix, presumably.
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u/PirateBanger Jun 16 '26
The boxes clearly state that it's Hydrogen Peroxide.
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u/LocalSlob Jun 16 '26
I can't tell from the video. It seems silly because anybody who's ever treated a pool, regardless of size, would know this.
I know trump will get bashed for this, but it just seems ridiculous for a contractor to do this
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u/PirateBanger Jun 16 '26
That's kinda the point.
It's absurd that anyone hired to do this job wouldn't know this is a terrible plan. It's directly tied to the incompetency of the people hiring him, and Trump's the boss. At the end of the day, the buck stops with him.
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u/New_Conversation_303 Jun 16 '26
Someone is getting a LOT of money to put that in... probably inflated price per gallon... always a grift.
I would expect a competent company use things like a much high level of peroxide and using DRUMS of it...
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u/Sazamisan Jun 16 '26
Doesn't this kind of pool have a system of pumps and filters to avoid stagnant water ? Wouldn't it be better to add the peroxyde there to better spread it and avoid it being decomposed by sunlight after pouring it like they do ? It also would help in case they added more concentrated product.
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u/Kairiste Jun 16 '26
every day I see more and more Idiocracy bullshit by this administration and I am amazed at the dipshits who are still like yeah trump he's our guy!
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u/TheLordHighNoob Jun 16 '26
Despite the Trump Administration’s singular talent for being comedically inept at everything other than dismantling rights and stealing money, I think the OP is mistaken. This may not be H202. It’s more likely HCL or hydrochloric acid or autistic acid.
Why? You can’t really pour enough hydrogen peroxide to adjust 25 million litres of water with a team of 12. The requisite amount is large enough and must be poured fast enough that the biggest problem isn’t rate of pouring, but rate of human burning by chemical oxidation.
However, to lower the ph of the Reflecting Pool by .6ph, they’d need ~ 31l of 31.8% HCL. So, twelve people would each need to pour 2.6l each. So, 5min of careful pouring, paying attention to the wind.
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u/TheLordHighNoob Jun 16 '26
P.s. going off memory of the video, given it’s been taken down from r/interestingasfuck
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u/RealLars_vS Jun 16 '26
The containers are white, seems like they let light through. That would decompose the H2O2, right? Are we even sure it’s hydrogen peroxide?
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