What’s Involved in ‘Balancing Pool Water’?
Each season when the cover comes off, balancing pool water is a must before it is safe to swim in. This involves checking the pH level of your pool, as well as its alkalinity and hardness.
How to Measure Balance
To maintain proper balance, pool water should be tested weekly. Kits are available from pool stores and department stores that test for pH, alkalinity, calcium hardness, and more.
Typically these kits come with two tubes next to each other with scales of numbers on either side. Often, one side is yellow and one is red. The test supplies will turn pool watercolors in the tubes. These can then be matched to the scale to measure water balance.
Other kits look like a test strip that turns colors. You then compare the colors on the test strip to a chart to detect water balance.
What Needs to Be in Balance?
It is important to understand what you’re looking for when you are measuring to balance the water in your pool. This will give you the big picture of what goes into keeping your pool safe and healthy to swim in.
Monitoring levels of chlorine is an important element of balancing the water in your pool. There must be enough chlorine present to sanitize the water. However, if it is too much, it could be unsafe to swim in. Measurements should be between 1.0 and 4.0 ppm.
To assist with chlorine, a stabilizer of cyanuric acid can be added. Without a stabilizer, sunlight can break down chlorine too quickly. This should test in a range of 30 to 100 ppm.
There is a limit to the amount of alkalinity is safe in a pool. An ideal alkalinity measurement is around 100 ppm, ranging from 80 to 120 ppm. Substances such as sodium bisulfate or increasers can be added to adjust this number.
Measurements for pH should range in the 7’s, which is neither high nor low pH. Having the correct pH affects how chlorine functions in the water. A level that is too high or too low could make the water dangerous.
Likewise, calcium hardness can do damage to the pool itself or make the water cloudy. Keeping calcium in balance means aiming for measurement of 200 to 400 ppm.
Pool Care
But why spend your time doing the balancing and calculating the amounts when you can just make it part of your regular pool maintenance. Pink Dolphin Pool Care offers Chemical Plus Cleaning Service and Full Service Pool Cleaning to keep your water balanced.
If you’re ready to pass off pool maintenance like balancing your pool water, get in touch with Pink Dolphin Pool Care at (602) 688-7465 today to learn more about Phoenix pool care.
