When it comes to swimming pool maintenance, just about every pool owner has a few green pool horror stories. However, keeping your water clear is a simple process that can be made easy by properly using the two methods of chlorine delivery. This process can be easily accomplished on a weekly basis. On the other hand, these simple tasks can turn into a nightmares that require hours upon hours to clean up if they are not monitored consistently. Proper delivery will keep you in the pool and out of the pool store.
First and foremost, you have to maintain a proper chlorine level. When it comes to chlorine delivery, you have two main options. You can purchase it in granulated powder form, or you can buy it in tablet form. The powder form is what you use to "shock" the pool with. This type of chlorine provides a high, short term dosage of chlorine to the water. By contrast, the tablet form provides a moderate, long term dosage of chlorine to the water. Both types of delivery are important, but the tablet form is crucial to pool maintenance made easy.
The trick is to never let your chlorine level drop below 1 or 2. When you try to accomplish this with powder chlorine alone, every couple of days you will have to add the chlorine powder and brush it around until it is dissolved. Depending on the size of your pool, this can take as long as thirty minutes. If you use tablets, this process can be accomplished by filling your chlorinator once a week. Also, since the tablets dissolve gradually they do not raise your chlorine level so high that you cannot swim for hours afterward. In addition, the tablets will usually minimize the number of times the pool has to be "shocked" to only after heavy swimming or rainfall.
There are two main types of chlorinators you can use to dissolve the tablets. The cheapest and most reliable is the floater. This type can be loaded with tablets and simply placed in the water. The floater is the most reliable because it dissolves the tablets regardless of circulation or water level. However, the floaters have been known to turn over and spill the tablets in the pool. This can lead to bleaching of the liner and can be very expensive to fix. The other alternative is the inline chlorinator that is permanently installed in the water return line plumbing. The main benefit of this type of chlorinator is that it eliminates the risk of tablets being spilled on the liner. On the other hand, this type is not as reliable because an air pocket can be created in the tube as the equipment is turned on and off. If the tube is full of air and not water, your tablets will not dissolve at all. If you have this type of chlorinator, it is important that you open the cap every time you turn your pump on so that the air bubble can be pushed out.
While tablets are the most important, powder chlorine is still a necessary element of water clarity. As mentioned earlier, you should only have to add powder chlorine after heavy swimming or rainfall if you are adding the tablets weekly. Both events introduce large amounts of radicals to your pool that your chlorine has to remove. Since tablets dissolve slowly, you will need an immediate large dose to compensate for the chlorine needed to get the water back to normal.
From my experience, just about all water chemistry issues begin with improper chlorine levels. If you stay on top of this process with chlorine tablets, you should have far less horror stories in the future. However, do not forget to give the tablets a boost with powder chlorine when events occur that get the pool really dirty.
Stop Feeding Algae in Your Swimming Pool
0 comments:
Post a Comment