There’s a fair amount that swimming pool owners need to know if they are to effectively maintain their investment to help it last longer. And of course, there’s also simply the fact that good swimming pool maintenance will help make the pool water pleasanter and safer to swim in every time someone fancies taking a dip.
It’s difficult to rank elements of swimming pool maintenance in order of importance, but water balance has a fair claim to being the most important. So, what are some of the essential things you ought to know about swimming pool water balance, and how you can achieve and maintain it?
What really is swimming pool water balance?
The term “water balance” explains itself, in a way: it’s all about ensuring your pool water has the right mix of basic components, at the right levels, so that the water remains “balanced”.
When providers of swimming pool chemicals online like Pool Warehouse talk about “swimming pool water balance”, they’re typically referring to the following five main components that pool owners need to keep at certain levels:
• Total alkalinity, which refers to the amount of alkaline in the water. There is a close relationship between this and pH, given that low alkaline water leads to low pH, and high alkaline water leads to high pH.
• pH, which indicates a given body of pool water’s relative acidity or alkalinity. The closer a pool’s pH levels are to 0 on the scale, the more acidic they are, whereas the closer they are to the maximum reading – 14 – the higher the relative level of alkaline in the water. The term ‘pH neutral’, then, refers to a reading of 7, and a level of 7.2 to 7.6 – in other words, slight alkaline – is considered the ideal compromise.
• Calcium hardness, or “water hardness”, refers to the amount of calcium in the pool water. Not having enough calcium in your pool water can lead to the surface of your pool “chalking” or eroding. If the calcium hardness level is too high, though, the water could become murky, and scale formations could appear. A minimum level of 200ppm, and a maximum level of 400ppm, is therefore recommended for swimming pools.
• Stabiliser, which helps a pool to retain chlorine for longer than would otherwise be the case – indeed, it is added to some types of chlorine for this purpose. A too-low stabiliser level in your pool water will cause you to go through more chlorine in the maintenance of your pool. Meanwhile, an overly high level of stabiliser will necessitate you diluting your pool water to return it to a ‘normal’ stabiliser range of between 40 and 100ppm.
• Total dissolved solids (TDS), which – as the term suggests – relates to the dissolved minerals present in pool water. Such dissolved minerals are present in all water except for distilled water. The evaporation of pool water causes minerals to get left behind and become concentrated. As evaporation continues from one day to the next, an ever-greater level of concentrated minerals will be retained in the pool water. Those minerals left in the pool water can make it trickier for the chemicals you have in your pool to do their work, so you might see stains starting to form. If, then, your pool water has a TDS level of 3,000 ppm or more, it can be a good idea to drain some of that water and replace it with fresh water.
We can supply the essentials that will help you achieve water balance in your pool
Hopefully, the above will have helped give you an appreciation of the crucial role your pool’s water balance will play in the all-round maintenance of your pool.
Our extensive selection of pool chemicals online here at Pool Warehouse includes many of the items you will be thankful to have when seeking to achieve water balance – encompassing the likes of pH Plus, pH Minus, Alkalinity Increaser, and Calcium Hardness. So, why look anywhere else when you are eager to ensure you get the very best out of your swimming pool during 2023?