Top 5 List of Strange Things that Affect Your Pool Water

By Glen Bains

If you’re having water trouble and can’t figure it out, here are a few extraordinary things you might check: 

1. Don’t assume tap water is good water for a pool. The typical hardness in tap water is as high as 1000 ppm — 700 ppm above the high end of the maximum concentration. 
2. The circulation time required to keep a pool clean and clear is normally 10 hours a day. This varies due to bather load, water temperature, wind, rain, sunlight and pool chemistry itself. 
3. Some pool chemicals actually contain minerals that can add to a calcium problem. 
4. There’s been plenty of talk and about removing phosphates from pool water. In truth, phosphates do not consume chlorine and do not combine with chlorine. Rather, Phosphates promote the growth of algae (the green, slippery stuff in a pool) which then consumes all the chlorine as the chlorine tries to destroy the algae. The net result is that you can be left with less than the desirable amount of chlorine in your pool. 
5. In a salt chlorinated pool, UV light will speed up the conversion of chlorine back to salt. A chlorine stabilizer (sort of like sun block) will dramatically slow down this conversion keeping more chlorine available for a longer time. Without this proper protection, the life span of the chlorine is greatly reduced. 

Remember: Clear water doesn’t mean good water, but good water will be clear. 

If you need help with your pool please contact Costa Rica Pools at 506-2777-1700 or 506-2643-3227 , or by email at [email protected] or  www.costaricaswimmingpools.com