Swimming pool water, even when blue and clear doesn’t always mean it’s safe to swim in. With numerous people swimming in pools, suntan oils, body oils, spilled drinks and the unfortunate, when someone urinates in a pool they can become anything but safe! Controlling some of these are easy when it’s your pool but what about when you swim in commercial pools? There has been a lot of discussions lately about the safety of swimming in commercial pools and we want to give you a few tips on how to make sure your pool is safe to swim in! Monitoring your sanitation levels is always extremely important especially when the temperatures warm up. Typically when this happens it’s recommended to have at least 3 parts per million (ppm) chlorine levels and that might need to increase with heavy swimming. Making sure your pH level is within 7.2 – 7.8 is also important for the following reasons:
A low pH gives:
- aggressive water, which damages the mechanical components of the pool
- irritations of the eyes and mucous membranes
- damage to the pool liner
A high pH gives:
- poorer chlorine disinfection
- skin irritation
- cloudiness in the water
But what about calcium hardness and total dissolved solids? What happens when those levels increase in a swimming pool along with cyanuric acid? Calcium is a major problem because of our fill water. It causes total dissolved solid levels to increase and if you use a lot of chlorine tablets in your swimming pool, your cyanuric acid (stabilizer) levels will increase too. The following are considered normal levels:
Calcium Hardness – 200 – 400 ppm
Total Dissolved Solids – Under 3,000 ppm (unless you have a salt pool)
Cyanuric Acid – below 100 ppm
At any given time when these levels are higher than what is within normal limits, pool professionals will recommend changing out the water in your swimming pool! Please keep in mind that a typical drain a refill is a complete waste of water and in many areas the tap water is higher in calcium hardness than what is recommended. That’s why we recommend purifying your swimming pool water with our Puripool Process. It conserves the water, it lowers calcium, total dissolved solids, cyanuric acid and gives you a better end product than a drain and refill. It also removes waterborne diseases. Last week we were called out to a 30,000 gallon swimming pool with high calcium, TDS and cyanuric acid.
Initial Chemistry
Calcium Hardness – 630 ppm
TDS – 3664 ppm
Cyanuric Acid – 140 ppm
After filtering this swimming pool for 15 hours we were able to conserve 85% of the water and give them a fantastic end product.
Ending Chemistry
Calcium Hardness – 120 ppm
TDS – 848 ppm
Cyanuric Acid – 50 ppm
If you’re interested in learning how our mobile filtration system can help you, call us today at 800-535-0778!
We will be having our second mobile filtration trailer coming online in a few weeks which is going to lower our lead time. If you’re in the San Diego, San Marcos, Carlsbad, Escondido or Vista area contact us to schedule your swimming pool purification today!