It’s pretty much assumed that if you have a swimming pool, especially in the Southwestern U.S. that you should be familiar with the term Total Dissolved Solids (TDS). TDS is best described by, “the total amount of mobile charged ions, including minerals, salts or metals dissolved in a given volume of water, expressed in units of mg per unit volume of water (mg/L), also referred to as parts per million (ppm).” In the pool industry TDS is directly related to the purity of water and usually a number that is referred to when it’s time to change out the water in your swimming pool.
Dissolved solids come from organic sources such as leaves and silt, it can also come from fertilizers and pesticides too. Dissolved solids also come from inorganic materials such as rocks and air that may contain calcium bicarbonate. But, the most common place that these dissolved solids come from is our water. The water picks up many of these metals because of where it is sourced which over time causes numerous problems to the surface of the pool, the tile and pool equipment.
As water evaporates, the minerals stay behind which slowly destroys the surface of the swimming pool but also can make it harder to handle the water chemistry as well. The general rule of thumb is to change out the water every 2 years. If you take a water sample into a pool store they will usually recommend changing out your water when TDS levels climb above 3,000ppm. At that point you have two options:
- Drain and refill with hard water from the tap (not recommended)
- Reverse Osmosis
Our mobile filtration trailers are equipped with high pressure reverse osmosis trailers that can lower TDS and other hardness minerals while conserving 85% of the water in the swimming pool. There are many areas in the United States including Southern California, where we are located, where drought conditions are at an all-time high and water conservation is in the news. Our mobile filtration trailers have conserved about 15 million gallons of water and this process is a solid reason to never drain your pool again. If you’re curious as to how this process is done in a swimming pool, we invite you to watch this short VIDEO.