Dowflake alternative, locally!

[sfsuphysics]

Just decided to pull the trigger and get Leslie's Hardness Plus, it's 94-97% Calcium Chloride, about as pure as you're going to get, (Dowflake is only 77-80% calcium chloride btw). There are lots of local stores, http://leslies.know-where.com/leslies/ and best of all it's cheap! Well ok, not as cheap as Dowflake is per 50# bag, but then again if you can get that locally... good luck! A 15# bucket of the stuff ended up costing me $30, they sell 45# buckets for twice that. Now you might say "well buckeyefield..." has it for $12 ... read the fine print, that's 16 cups worth, that's only about 7 pounds worth.. but don't forget the shipping charges.. figure it'll be at least $20 when you're said and done, not to mention the hardness plus is ~20% Calcium Chloride per pound!

Anyways, just a heads up in case you're like me and needing a quick calcium fix without wanting to spend $15 on a small bottle of Kent's Liquid Calcium or something.

 

[Mr. Ugly]

Buckeye used to be good, but they cut down the package size and increased the shipping.

Some people get paranoid about 97% pure vs. 80% pure. Not a biggie. The difference is mainly the water of hydration.

The 97% stuff is anhydrous. The 80% is hydrated.

Just make sure you use less of the anhydrous CaCl2 when mixing your 2-part. 20% less, if I remember right. Just use the Peladow version of the recipe.

Here's some info from Dow on the 2 types.

http://www.dow.com/PublishedLiterature/dh_044b/09002f138044bad9.pdf?filepath=calcium/pdfs/noreg/173-01527.pdf&fromPage=GetDoc

http://www.dow.com/PublishedLiterature/dh_0450/09002f1380450d77.pdf?filepath=calcium/pdfs/noreg/173-01530.pdf&fromPage=GetDoc

 

[Natterjak]

Yup, you'll want to use about 400g instead of 500g.

 

[sfsuphysics]

Yeah when they said

Something nice about taking a little 20-30 minute drive to get a bucket of the stuff that rocks over having to wait for a brown van to show up a few days later with it

 

[doliver]

I just got a bucket of Hardness Plus -- so when you say 400g, how many cups of the stuff does that equate to?

 

[Gomer]

arbitrary numbers on the anhydrous calculator resulted in this ratio

206.3 grams; 7.2 oz; approx 41.2 tsp

so, 400g = 80tsp = 1 2/3 cups

 

[doliver]

Great, thanks.

 

[sfsuphysics]

only 1 2/3 cups? I think I use somewhere on the order of 500grams and I use.. hmm I think I need to remeasure, but I'm pretty sure it was significantly more than 1.67 cups.