Lowering Cyanuric Acid In Your Swimming Pool
Cyanuric Acid (CYA) is also known as stabilizer and conditioner for your swimming pool. It is a chemical that is necessary to help retain chlorine in your swimming pool. However, as much as it is important, what happens when the levels get too high? In this blog post, we want to analyze what CYA does and what you should do if the levels get too high! Please note, most pool professionals will recommend draining your swimming pool and starting over but at Pure Water Industries we don’t agree with that and want to show you why using The Puripool Process on your swimming pool water is a much better solution.
When you are concerned about chlorine loss, one of the most common chemicals used is CYA. The conditioner protects the free chlorine from being destroyed by the ultraviolet rays of the sun. CYA is known as a stabilizer for the chlorine in swimming pools exposed to sunlight. It helps reduce the chlorine loss by protecting the free chlorine in the pool from the sun’s ultraviolet rays, which in turn reduces the amount of chlorine needed to maintain proper sanitizer levels. Because of this, Cyanuric Acid can help reduce the cost of maintaining a safe and clean swimming pool. Depending on whether or not you have a salt system, the normal ranges for CYA in your swimming pool is 30 to 80 parts per million (ppm). But, what happens when those levels are higher than 80ppm? The biggest issue would be the effectiveness of the chlorine to act as a disinfectant. When you have higher levels of CYA it will bind with the chlorine, making it slower acting to kill bacteria and microorganisms, and prevent algae from growing. Higher levels will also increase cloudiness in the pool water; making it very susceptible to algae growth and challenges with taking care of your swimming pool. It could also increase the amount of chlorine you will need to use to keep it clear and free of algae growth.
At this point, most pool professionals will recommend a full or partial drain of the water in your swimming pool to lower Cyanuric Acid levels. Although they are correct in the need to lower the levels of CYA we don’t recommend a drain and refill. First and foremost, our fill water is extremely “hard” in the San Diego area. It is loaded with calcium, magnesium and other hardness minerals which defeat the purpose of putting good water back in your pool. That’s why we want to introduce you to our mobile filtration trailer that comes to your residential or commercial swimming pool. It’s equipped with Reverse Osmosis (RO) filtration that lowers Calcium Hardness, Total Dissolved Solids (TDS), Cyanuric Acid (CYA), and so much more without draining the swimming pool. Just this past week we filtered a 25,660-gallon swimming pool that was dealing with high levels of CYA.
Initial Chemistry
Calcium Hardness – 840ppm
Total Dissolved Solids – 3624ppm
Cyanuric Acid – 200ppm (HIGH)
After filtering this swimming pool for 15 hours we were able to conserve 21,000-gallons and leave them with the following chemistry….
Ending Chemistry
Calcium Hardness – 180ppm
Total Dissolved Solids – 980ppm
Cyanuric Acid – 50ppm
This customer now has great water chemistry and it will be much easier to manage it when the temperatures warm up. If you should have any questions about our service or how you can schedule an appointment today, please contact us!