Your Essential Guide To Swimming Pool Temperature And Chlorine

Posted by  on 22 January, 2018

Keeping the pool clean at all times allows you and your family to enjoy a dip anytime you like. More importantly, properly sanitizing the pool helps to prevent any health concerns and discomfort that may arise from algae, disease causing pathogens, or excess chlorine.

Here’s a simple guide to help you achieve acceptable pool water quality with regard to the temperature and chlorine sanitization:

Temperature

Most swimmers generally prefer a higher water temperature, even though your body quickly adapts to a cool pool and is actually more refreshing it on a hot day. What you may not realize is that higher water temperatures pose several risks, including:

  • Faster micro-organism multiplication – this leads to the increased use of chemical disinfectants and higher pool maintenance costs
  • Higher energy costs as you need to heat the water to a higher temperature
  • Water pollution and higher load on the pool’s chemical disinfection system – since the swimmers get hotter and tend to sweat more
  • Higher moisture content within the internal pool equipment, resulting in condensation and corrosive damage to the walls, etc.
  • Decreased solubility of dissolved gases, which increases the incidence of foul smells (chloramine) and potentially toxic gases (haloforms)

To prevent these problems, you need to strike a balance between the need for higher water temperatures and operational issues.

Use Of Chlorine

Water generally contains disease-causing germs. Chlorine kills bacteria and algae in the water through a process called oxidation. In fact, this process is so effective that most drinking water contains chlorine for sterilization.

You need a minimum chlorine level of 1 ppm to destroy any algae and harmful bacteria in pool water. For optimal algae control, it is recommended that you also add an algaecide to destroy any nutrients in the pool.

If the water used is clean and sediment-free, you only need to add 1-2 parts of elemental chlorine to 10 million parts of water. Such weak levels of chlorine cannot harm you internally or externally, though it is not unusual for your eyes to start to sting if you stay in the pool for too long.

Keep in mind that super chlorination, or shocking the pool water to destroy organic, ammonia, and nitrogen contaminants, does not cause much harm to humans, but it can make the bathing experience unpleasant until the chlorine drops to a normal level. Ideally, there should be no smell of chlorine. If there is a strong odour, it could be because there is insufficient chlorine in the pool, and the little that’s present is combined with other stuff in the pool.

Final Tip

When a lot of chlorine is used for sanitization, the swimming pool should not be used until the algae is dead, and the chlorine level has returned to a safe level of 3 ppm or less. Test the chlorine level every day and adjust it accordingly for proper disinfection.