When you have your own pool, you need to maintain it throughout the year in order to make the water clear and pristine. Maintaining the pool filter, disinfecting it, checking for the right water chemistry and cleaning the area around the pool are all the measures you need to take. However, sometimes, you just get cloudy pool water. So, how can you clear it?
In the first place, you’ll need to do a complete treatment to the water. Test the water and balance the chemicals.
Here’s exactly what you should do when you have cloudy pool water:
* Step #1: Test the Water:
You need to check not only the color of the water as well as the pool walls. Molds, algal growth, and body wastes from swimmers (sweat, sunscreen, dead skin cells, among others) can cause the cloudiness that you’re seeing.
You also need to get a pool test kit. This kit will allow you to measure the pH, the cyanuric acid, alkalinity, total, free, and combined chlorine, and the calcium hardness. These are all the levels that have a major impact not only on the water clarity but on the sterility and safety of the water pool as well.
The most important factors that you need to check is the calcium hardness and the pH since these are usually the ones that affect the water clearness. However, if you see that the chlorine is low, this might indicate biological contamination.
* Step #2: Chlorine Shock If Needed:
If you got the chlorine levels above the .3ppm, you need to give the pool a chlorine shock. Without chlorine, the pool water isn’t being sanitized, which means it’s not safe to take a swim since contaminants and particles build up in the water. When you give your pool a chlorine shock, the goal is to make them disappear so that you can safely swim.
When you’re using a pool shock kit, you should expect that the chlorine level to go to 20-30ppm.
* Step #3: Non-Chlorine Shock:
When your water pool has a high level of organic waste, chlorine is used to attack that. However, this gives bacteria room to grow. With a non-chlorine shock, you’ll be oxidizing the organics, which will make your pool water clearer. When you do this shock, the free chlorine will have the space it needs to attack either the bacteria as well as the algae.
Check out Oxygen Pools Chlorine Free Water Treatment System, a safe and effective alternative to salt chlorine pools and standard chlorinated pools.
* Step #4: Algaecide:
Algaecide is a great method to clean your pool water from algae. You can find it in two different forms: metallic which is made of copper and silver, and quaternary ammonia. Despite they both work, the best one to clear your pool water is the ammonia since it’s cheaper and it won’t stain your pool. The only problem with ammonia is that some people find it irritating.
If your water is still cloudy there are a few other reasons we’ll go over in another post.
