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Swimming Pool Water Treatment Guide - Swimming Pool Chlorine Test
Its very important to remember the three aspects to be measured when you buy your chlorine test kit to measure the amount of chlorine levels you have in your pool:
- Combined Chlorine: When there in not enough free available chlorine this can form undesirable bad smells and irritating compounds.
- Free Available Chlorine: This is the most important measurement for you as it will show you the amount of chlorine your pool has to sanitize and disinfect your swimming pools water. 'Free Available Chlorine' is also know as 'Residual Chlorine'.
- Total Chlorine: This will show you the total amount of chlorine in your pools water for both Combined chlorine and free available chlorine.
The amount of available chlorine in your swimming pools water is what we need to look at. This is because this is the amount of chlorine that acts on foreign substances in your pools water to keep the water and swimming pool its self clean and much safer for your swimmers.
Not enough chlorine: This can result in your pool getting; algal, bacterial growth, cloudy water, waterborne illnesses and over all insufficient water sanitation.
Too Much Chlorine: This can result in irritations to the eyes, nose and skin. This is due to chlorine being carcinogenic so to have complete disinfection you should try to keep the chlorine to its minimum required levels.
For more accurate results and easier use you should use chlorine tablets rather then liquid chlorine reagents. DPD chlorine measuring tablets can measure the amount of free available chlorine so should try to get them.
You should always test your swimming pool water as the test kits instructions say. But also remember you should get your swimming pool water sample from a minimum of 20 - 30cm in from the pools wall and the same distance of 20 - 30cm below the surface.
2.0ppm in the recommended ideal amount of available chlorine but the desirable available chlorine level of swimming pool water is 1.0 - 3.0ppm.
How much chlorine to add after test results. As a rough general guide to adding chlorine we would say you need about 600g of granular chlorine for every 50,000l of swimming pool water added twice a week in a hot swimming season (600g is around two - three cups). Please Note: Regular testing is the only way to determine how much chlorine you need to add and this is only a rough general guide to get you started.
