Fix It and keep it

Pool owners complain that their swimming pool water is not really clean, but has a strong odor of chlorine so, it seems as though, there must be enough in the water to ensure proper disinfection.


It is normal to think that a strong smell would indicate an abundance of something, but with chlorine it is actually the opposite. What happens with chlorine is, if you can smell chlorine, the swimming pool hasn't got enough - strange, isn't it?! What you are smelling are chloramines. These are formed when insufficient levels of free available chlorine react with ammonia and other nitrogen-containing compounds (swimmer waste, sweat, urine, etc.), resulting in the wastes only being partially broken down (creating halomethanes and odor).

To confirm this, measure the free available chlorine and total chlorine. You will be able to calculate the unwanted, irritating combined chlorine compounds as follows:

Combined chlorine = total chlorine - free chlorine

You will probably find that there is little or no free available chlorine and too much combined chlorine. A chlorine shock treatment or other pool water sanitiser is necessary to complete the disinfection and dissipate the combined chlorine.

The combined chlorine in the pool water can also be destroyed with a non-chlorine powder based shock if you prefer not to use large quantities of liquid chlorine.

This entry was posted on Monday, May 11th, 2009 at 2:21 pm and is filed under Swimming Pool. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.