It shocked us that we received so many ‘negative’ responses to the recent string of pool and pool water articles on our site… because millions of Americans each year get sick in some way, shape or form from swimming (or as some people call it bathing) in water that contained harmful biological contaminants.

Even worse, a good number of the sufferers contracted their illnesses not from public pools and swimming facilities, but rather from private pools at friends’, neighbors’ and family members’ homes.

If I can smell chlorine, the water is safe, right?

Not always and in some cases the powerful smell of chlorine in the air ought to tell you something may have gone wrong with the water recently. In general, with indoor pools excluded (for the most part), an intense smell of chlorine in the air tells you the pool may recently have received a dose of chlorine shock OR the water has very recently had a larger than normal biological load (i.e. people in the pool, someone had an ‘accident’ in the pool — see 1 in 5 Americans Admits Peeing in Swimming Pools), or the water has an overabundance of combined chlorine with little or no free chlorine available to combat bacteria, viruses, etc. in the water.

Pool water gets in eyes, noses, ears, mouths… and unmentionable areas areas each time you take a dip in the water. Allow us to repeat ourselves for the purpose of making our point:

Pool water gets in eyes, noses, ears, mouths… and unmentionable areas areas each time you take a dip in the water.

We hope this posting will teach at least a few folks the importance of carefully monitoring the quality and condition of pool water.

PLEASE don’t get us started on spa and hot tub water.

As a final, and quite NASTY reminder, some folks out there DO use public (and private) pools as a way to clean themselves after a day (or few days days) out in the hot sun.

Gross? Yes. But STILL a reality. Remember that.

Ordinarily the title of this article would mean a dirty individual has decided to take a dip in the water but not this time. Today it means a SMART pool or spa owner dropped a product called a Scumball into the water.

Scumball simply float around on the surface of the water soaking up body oils, tanning lotions, etc. so that less of that stuff becomes a ring around the edge of the pool or spa.

These bad boys can soak up 40 times their own weight before needing to get… rinsed with clean water, cleaned and reused!

So, if you would like to reduce the amount of pool wall scrubbing you have to do this pool season we suggest you consider allowing Scumballs to hang out in the water.

Or, if the idea of swimming with scumballs just plain offends you, take a look at pool additives like Pool Perfect and Pool First Aid that use enzymes to break down oils and greases in pool/spa water.

Each time when you go to the pool store to get chemicals — or floaties for the kids’ arms — one of the men or women at the counter probably suggests that you add some sort of pool water clarifier (sometimes called a pool water polisher) to give it that perfectly clear appearance… but do they ever take the time to explain what the contents of that magical bottle actually DO?

If not, then today’s your lucky day because we will now tell you, in really simple terms, what that mystery stuff does: It makes suspended solids in the pool water stick to one another so that the filter can more easily catch them.

Each brand of pool clarifier has a slightly different method of accomplishing that goal, but in the end they all pretty much do the same thing.

OK, well what is a pool FLOCCULANT, then?

The term flocculant refers to chemical compounds that cause smaller suspended particles to stick together for the purpose of making it easier for a filter to catch them or to cause them to precipitate out of the water and fall to the bottom where a pool vacuum then removes them from the water.

More or less all clarifiers and water polishers qualify as flocculants but, according to recent pool chemical marketing trends, the ones that actually CALL themselves flocculants get recommended for more serious pool water clarity problems.

Any problem with using clarifiers on a regular basis?

With chlorine based sanitizer systems (powders, tablets, liquid, sticks, etc.) we have not heard of any real reason to not use clarifiers on a regular basis. As always, though, we suggest reading and following the directions on the bottle. Not all clarifiers have the same directions for use!

Pressure building in filter after adding clarifiers?

Do not panic! Roughly 9 times out of 10 this means the clarifier has made it easier for your filter to catch dissolved solids previously too small for the filter to catch. Simply backwash the filter each time this happens — or ‘bump’ your DE filter if you have that option — and let your filter get back to doing its job.

Filters that use DE (Diatomaceous Earth) to coat their filter elements will tend to clog and require ‘bumping’ or backwashing more quickly than sand filters due to the efficiency of their filtering mechanisms. In extreme cases the filter elements (fingers, grids, etc.) may need a good cleaning and possibly acid washing soon after you clear up your water problem.

Read the label on the clarifier you select and make sure to heed any warnings regarding the use of that product with certain types of filters.

Can clarifiers take the place of chlorine, bromine, etc.?

Absolutely NOT! Chlorine, bromine and other pool water sanitizer systems serve a completely different purpose and you should not decrease the amount them used because you start adding a clarifier product to your water.

Pool sanitizers help to keep the water in a pool safe from bacteria, germs, etc. Pool clarifiers help get unwanted dissolved solids out of the water.

After years of getting requests from loyal readers to open an online store where they could quickly and easily locate a lot of the products we frequently write about… we have finally taken the plunge and opened the Water Testing Blog Store.

Water Testing Blog Store Now Open

To start we have selected 20 water quality testing products that we feel do an excellent job of accurately measuring various water quality parameters that really and truly should matter to more people.

Examples: Arsenic, Bacteria, Chlorine, Metals, and, of course, everyone’s favorite in the Summer, Pool & Spa Water Quality.

Look for us to expand our offerings as time goes on and, as always, thanks for dropping by the Water Testing Blog… and don’t forget to test your water on a regular basis!

Each year Gremlins sneak into people’s sheds, garages and pool cabanas with one goal in mind: To steal pool test kit reagents! If you, like thousands of other innocent pool owners, have fallen victim to those evil little bastards, the links below will certainly come in handy:

Don’t own a test kit, yet, or need to replace your whole kit? Check out Pool Center’s Pool Test Kits Page for information on some of this year’s best selling pool water test kits.

Oh, and for those in search of a simple dip-n-read test strip for pool water testing, Water Testing Blog now carries the Pool Check 5-in-1 Test Strip and several other test strips for swimming pools.

We often get asked for advice on how to save money on pool chemicals — especially since gas prices won’t go down and more people have to keep a closer watch on their finances.

Thus far we have found two main ways that pool owners can save money on pool chemicals:

1) Test Your Pool Water: By keeping your water in balance you can avoid costly pool water problems like algae, staining, etc. that all require chemicals to correct. A pool with the correct chemical balance ought never see the likes of algae or staining!

2) Chemical Value Packs: Buying in bulk at the beginning of the season when pool supply companies like In the Swim and Pool Center offer great deals on combination packs of pool chemicals and supplies that you will need over the course of the season will save you time and money in the long-run.

Simply put, the total chlorine concentration in a water sample includes all available free chlorine plus all the chlorine that has already oxidized (acted on) contaminants in the water and become combined chlorine (monochloramines).

Free (available) chlorine refers to the concentration of chlorine molecules residing a water sample that have not, yet, oxidized contaminants. As a general rule you want to maintain a free chlorine residual in a body of water or water source.

Therefore, if a water sample has a total chlorine residual but no free, available chlorine, then the sample may or may not be ‘safe’. Some public (municipal) drinking water systems use only combined chlorine

Why would they do that?

It seems counter-intuitive that a public water systems would choose combined chlorine over free chlorine given free chlorine’s superior disinfecting (oxidizing) properties, but monochloramines do still have oxidizing capabilities and they do not create compounds (disinfection by-products, tri-halomethames, TTHM’s, etc.) that may cause cancer.

So… if you want to know how much free chlorine you have versus how much combined chlorine you have, simply subtract the free chlorine concentration from the total chlorine concentration:

(Total Chlorine) – (Free Chlorine) = Combined Chlorine

For pool water you can use a test strip like the Pool Check 5-Way or a Basic Taylor Test Kit to determine the free and total chlorine concentrations of a sample.

For drinking water you can use test strips like SenSafe Free Chlorine Water Check to determine the free chlorine concentration of a water sample and SenSafe Total Chlorine Water Check to determine the total chlorine concentration of a water sample.

OR, for an even easier test procedure, you can use the WaterWorks 2 Free & Total Chlorine Test Strip which tests for both free and total chlorine at the same time.

When opening a swimming pool too many people forget to TEST THE WATER before adding chemicals… Whether you choose to test the water yourself w/ test kits like the eXact Micro 7+ Pool Testing Meter or Pool Check Test Strips, or visit your local pool supply store and have them test your water at the beginning of the season, you will want to test for all or as many of these water quality parameters as possible. Note:

• Alkalinity – Not having the correct amount of alkalinity in your water will make getting and keeping the pH of your pool water very difficult.

• Calcium Hardness – Having too much calcium in your water could result in deposits forming and could also make it harder for other chemicals to dissolve in the water. Too little calcium in the water could result in pool water becoming aggressive and starting to attack various pool surfaces.

• Chlorine (Free) – If you use chlorine as your sanitizer, check to see if you have any left over from last year… or risk adding more than you need to add at the beginning of the year and ‘wasting’ money.

• Chlorine (Total) – If you use chlorine as your sanitizer and shocked your pool at the end of the previous season (as you SHOULD have), then you may have a lot of combined chlorine in your water that needs to get ‘burned out’ w/ a non-chlorine shock. Combined chlorine does little good when it comes to keeping pool water clean.

• pH – Incorrect pH levels drastically reduce the effectiveness of important pool chemicals such as bromine, chlorine, clarifiers, algaecides, etc.

• Metals – Having unwanted metals such as copper and iron in your pool water when you shock it w/ an oxidizer like chlorine or bromine at the beginning of the season could cause the metals to precipitate out of solution and stain pool surfaces.

• Stabilizer – Also known as cyanuric acid, having too little of this compound in pool water makes it difficult to maintain a free chlorine residual. Having too much of it can keep chlorine in a pool from doing its job.

• Total Dissolved Solids – Too many total dissolved solids in pool water will result in the water not accepting additional material… such as the chlorine powder (granules), tablets, sticks, or pool chemistry balancing chemicals.

So, get your water tested before adding start-up chemicals. Any questions?

Once again warmer weather has brought out the topic of pool water… and since no one REALLY wants to swim in unhealthy pool water we see NO REASON not to tackle pool water quality questions when they come our way.

Today’s question came to us from ‘AnThony07′ who asked, “Pool store guys said to fix pH after alkalinity. Why not just fix the problem pH they pointed out?”

Many folks mistake pH for alkalinity and at other times they mistake alkalinity for pH. Do the two have a lot in common? Well, sort of, but they also have enough differences that they both matter and need to get addressed separately and in the correct order.

Simply put,

• pH – A measure of how acidic or basic a water sample is.

• Alkalinity – A physical count of the ‘molecules’ that make a sample acidic or basic.

Yes, yes, we know… we oversimplified that by a mile… but for most pool owners that model works quite well.

On a more real-world level, think of it this way: If you walked into a room and wanted to change the overall mood or opinion of the room, would you have better luck exacting change on a room full of people or a room with fewer people in it?

Obviously you could get the change in mood or opinion in the room if it contained fewer people, right? Well the same goes for pool water. A pool with low alkalinity will change pH very easily as a result of outside influence (i.e. addition of acidic rain water, depositing of leaves that give off acids as they decompose, etc.) whereas a pool with the proper amount of alkalinity will take longer to have its pH altered by outside influences.

Conversely, a pool with too much alkalinity could, over time, go out of balance (acidic or basic) and then it would take a whole lot of persuading (i.e. the adding of chemicals) to correct the pH — and a lot of times the pH will shoot from one end of the spectrum to the other after the addition of, for the average pool owner, an unpredictable quantity of pH correction chemicals.

So… Does alkalinity matter, Anthony? You bet it does!

Moral of the story

Before you go WASTING MONEY on chemicals to fix the pH, make sure you have the proper amount of alkalinity in your pool water! If you don’t want to travel to the pool store every time you think your alkalinity may need checking, pool water test strips such as those manufactured by AquaChek or Pool Check work quite well, cost very little and provide fast, accurate results on-the-spot.

Or, for those who want to perform more in-depth testing so they can fine tune their pool water’s quality, pool water testing meter’s such as the eXact Micro 7+ Pool Testing Meter make it possible for the the average pool owner to test for a large number of important pool water characteristics — without the need for complicated mixing, measuring and interpreting of chemical reagents.

eXact Micro 7+ Pool Water Testing Meter…
a Pool Testing Meter for the Average Pool Owner

Rather than go into a (boring) chemistry lesson we will address the reason WHY so many of you have asked us this question: You want to know what it is because the pool guys left a bag of suspicious looking white powder at your house and didn’t tell you why.

DE (Diatomaceous Earth) Pool Filters

While many swimming pool filters use just sand as their primary filtration media, a good number of other pool filters use cloth-like filters covered in diatomaceous earth to filter pool water. The DE powder filters out particles far smaller than sand can remove and the cloth-like material over plastic framework stops large particles and debris from getting through.

Proper Use/Addition of Diatomaceous Earth

First and foremost, consult the manual that came with your filter system to make sure you actually HAVE a DE filter. Then, while you have the manual out, read the sections about starting a DE filter, backwashing a DE filter and cleaning a DE filter. Taking a few minutes right then and there to learn the correct way to care for YOUR filter system will save you innumerable headaches — and possibly a huge amount of money — down the road!

Now that you’ve read the manual you know that you should never operate a DE filter without adding the correct amount of DE through the skimmer, you need to replenish DE powder after backwashing and that once or twice a year you may need to put your filter elements (the ‘cloth’ covered things in your filter) through a process called acid washing (i.e. muriatic acid bath) to dislodge embedded microscopic particulates from their cloth covers…. right?!?

And for the record, you may NOT substitute cyanuric acid for muriatic acid, a chemical you will have to get from your local pool store or hardware store. Careful, though, if using product from a hardware store as it may have a much stronger concentration than its counterparts from the pool supply store!

Oh, and before we forget, many pool supply stores offer acid washing services with 48 hour turnaround times… in case you don’t feel like messing around with caustic chemicals in your backyard.