The correct water balance helps minimize eye irritation, reduce odors, help prevent corrosion and keep the pool crystal clear. The essential chemicals to monitor are pH and total alkalinity.
To maintain proper water chemistry, it’s essential to test the water regularly and perform basic maintenance such as skimming and brushing the surfaces. Keeping the water moving ensures the even distribution of chemicals and prevents algae growth.
Test the Water
Managing a pool isn’t easy, but it doesn’t have to be impossible. You can take specific steps to help make things much easier for yourself, including testing the water regularly and maintaining proper chemical levels.
For a swimming pool to be balanced, the pH, total alkalinity, calcium hardness, and cyanuric acid levels must all be within their correct ranges. This is a complicated task because almost everything that comes into contact with the water can affect its chemical levels.
For example, rainwater can change the water’s pH, and swimmers can leave behind oils or perfumes that can affect the pool’s alkalinity. To keep up with these changes, it’s essential to test the pool’s water frequently and at least once daily. You can use test strips or a color disk kit that will give you five results to measure chlorine, bromine, pH, acid demand, and total alkalinity. You can also purchase liquid muriatic acid or soda ash to adjust your pool’s chemical levels.
Adjust the Chemical Levels
Maintaining the proper chemical levels of your pool is the key to sparkling clean water. This is best achieved through regular testing with a pool test kit and adjusting as needed or weekly pool cleaning Bainbridge GA.
Keeping your pH, total alkalinity, and chlorine at the proper levels is essential. The weather, pool use, and sanitizer use affect these levels. The ideal pH range is 7.0 to 7.6, and alkalinity should be between 80 and 120 ppm.
If the pH is too low, it can cause metal fixtures to corrode and can irritate swimmers’ eyes and skin. It can also prevent Free Available Chlorine from working effectively.
Total alkalinity helps buffer the pH and can help prevent significant increases or decreases in acidity or basicity. It is recommended to adjust the total alkalinity before adjusting the pH, as this will help avoid adding too much baking soda (sodium bicarbonate) to raise it. It takes pounds of baking soda to raise alkalinity by ten ppm.
Keep the Water Clean
A clean, sparkling pool is a joy to swim in. But keeping a pool sanitized and healthy goes beyond just looking pretty—it’s about hygiene, safety, comfort, and efficiency.
The best way to ensure your pool is clean and safe to swim in is to keep the water chemistry balanced. Regularly test the water with a testing kit, and adjust chemical levels as needed. Keeping the pH level between 7.2 and 7.8 and the alkalinity at 80-120 PPM is vital for proper sanitization and preventing algae and bacteria growth.
Skimming and sweeping the pool’s surface regularly and brushing the walls and tiles is also essential. This helps the chemicals circulate evenly throughout the collection, reducing the risk of algae blooms. If algae do grow, use an algaecide to kill and inhibit any more growth.
Schedule Regular Maintenance
Establishing a cleaning routine, testing the water, adjusting chemical levels, brushing and vacuuming the pool, keeping a clean filter, ensuring proper pool circulation, and shocking the pool regularly will all help you maintain sparkling clean pool water. You will also want to keep the pool covered when not in use to minimize debris buildup.
Imbalanced pool water can damage equipment like pumps and heaters, and it is difficult for chlorine to function and kill contaminants when the pH, alkalinity, and calcium hardness are out of range. Keeping these in balance will keep your pool looking beautiful and inviting for everyone to enjoy!
Fiberglass pools are especially lauded for their dramatically lower water maintenance, reducing the fluctuation of water chemistry caused by weather and bather load that typically occurs with concrete or Gunite pools. Combined with automated sanitization systems, they can eliminate the need to manually test and treat pool water, providing crystal-clear swimming year-round.
