Water chemistry tips
Things to check if you have a chlorinating cell or automated dosing/ feeder:
- Test water at least every 2 weeks for all pool chemical requirements
- Make sure you have mineral test stripes for mineral pool
- Acid bin is above half full the whole time
- Salt levels are correct i.e. 3500 ppm for a 24g cell. This will ensure the cell can charge saline water. Without the correct level of salt/ minerals, the cell will not charge or produce chlorine
- All power plugs are plugged in correctly
- Use a testing kit to test water balance
Pool Water Chemistry 101
Maintaining the right chemistry in your pool water could be the most important job you’ll have as a pool owner. Not only it's crucial in keeping your pool clean and healthy, it's also important that you always consult the pool manufacturers guide to ensure your warranty is not voided because of poor water balance.
We know how daunting and convoluted these pool chemicals can seem in the beginning, but once you understand the reasons behind it you’ll see Pool water chemistry is actually quite simple – it’s basically a balancing act of regular treatment.
You are effectively trying to keep your water chemistry stable at all times, either in regular calculated doses or by monitoring a level and balancing it. If your water is not balanced it will either become corrosive or form stains and scale. Both are bad for you, your pool equipment and the surface of your pool. And every time someone swims, they leave behind body oils, hair, dead skin, shampoo...etc. The only thing keeping those contaminants from turning your pool into a black lagoon is a sanitiser, and in order for the sanitiser to work, other water attributes must be balanced: pH, alkalinity, and calcium hardness. (Credit: Swim University)
About pool chemicals
PH level
This is the most important chemical factor in your pool
• It refers to how acidic or alkaline your water is
• Low PH ( Too acidic) will burn your eyes and corrode your equipment
• High PH ( Too alkaline) will lead to scaling and calcium build up
• To lower your PH you can use either liquid or dry acid
• Recommend products: PH up or PH down
Recommend levels 7.2 - 7.6 PH
Alkalinity
It refers to the amount of carbonates and hydroxide in your pool water. These help to control and moderate the PH level of your pool.
• Low alkalinity levels often go unnoticed, but they lead to low PH levels which result in corrosive, acidic water that can damage the surface of your pool and equipment
• TA is raised by adding sodium bicarbonate
• Recommend product: Alkalinity up
Recommend levels: 100-200 ppm
Calcium hardness
• This is the measure of the amount of the calcium in your poo water.
• High Calcium hardness makes your water cloudy and leads to calcification
• Low calcium hardness makes your water slimy and damages metal and fittings and causes staining
• Calcium hardness can be raised with calcium chloride
• Recommend products: Calcium down, Calcium up
Recommend levels
Salinity as per product specification
Free chlorine
Maintaining an appropriate free chlorine level is the most important part of keeping your water balanced.
• Chlorine kills germs, bacteria and algae that could make your pool unsafe
• You run the risk of getting algae in your free chlorine level gets too low
• Available in liquid, granular and tablet form
• Recommended products, poo chlorine, stabilised chlorine, chlorine tablets, liquid chlorine and made using bags of salt in your pool that pass over a chlorinator cell, creating chlorine
CYA
• Cyanuric acid is another name for chlorine stabiliser which is a chemical that protects chlorine in the pool from the sun’s UV rays. This results in longer lasting chlorine
• CYA can be raised with cyanic acid.
• Recommended products: UV block out, UV block out tablets