Owning a swimming pool in Durban, or any other city is a wonderful luxury, but before you can make splashes and waves, you need to take responsibility for its upkeep, general health and monitoring your pool’s PH levels.
To ensure that your swimming pool water is safe (gentle on swimmers) and clean, proper water chemistry is required. Buying a pool cover, removing debris from the pool regularly, circulating the water and filtration all go a long way towards ensuring that you can enjoy a crystal clear pool in the scorching summer heat. But that’s not all you need to do. Ensuring that you have the correct PH levels and adjusting the chemicals in your swimming pool water accordingly, is also important.
At Pool Concepts we suggest testing your pool PH levels each week. If your PH reading is over 7.6, it’s best to use hydrochloric acid to adjust the balance. If the PH is below 7.2, sodium bicarbonate can be used to restore the PH to a healthy balance.
Your pool deserves some TLC
Maintaining a balanced PH level is essential to the health of your pool water. To check the PH level of your pool use a drop-type test kit regularly to ensure that it is at the prime level of 7.2. Interestingly, this is the same PH level of human tears. If your pool water does not have an exact PH level of 7.2, don’t fret. It’s normal for it to be between 7.2 and 7.6. If your eyes burn while swimming, it is most often the result of a high or low PH level and not the chlorine content as is often believed.
Alkalinity and chlorine content also play an important role
In order to successfully solve your swimming pool chemical imbalance, test the water for the correct PH levels, and then adjust the chemistry in the following order: alkalinity, bromine, chlorine, PH. It’s time to shock treat your swimming pool if the alkalinity is below 90ppm or the chlorine level is below 1-part ppm. Usually, a chorine or alkalinity enhancer can be used. It’s best to dissolve this in a bucket of water then slowly pour into the pool. It is vitally important to always follow manufacturer instructions when adjusting the chemistry of your pool water. If you aren’t familiar with the process involved and what chemicals to use, you would be well advised to consult with your Durban pool professionals. We understand that testing your pool water and adjusting the chemical content can be a tricky process. Interpreting the results and knowing just how to alter the water chemistry is not for the faint-hearted.
At Pool Concepts, we provide this service to our clients on a weekly basis. We can test and treat your water on-site, or you can opt to bring a water sample to us in Westville, for testing and advice on treatment.
