How to know when to SHOCK your swimming pool

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By poolrepairguy
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From time to time you will need to shock your pool . This article will tell you when , how, and how much shock you will need.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

your nose
a good quality test kit or test strips

Step 1

Step one is walk out to your pool early in the morning. This is usually the time of the least amount of breeze but you can do this "check " at anytime of day. Do you smell chlorine? If you answered yes your pool needs to be shocked. When you have enough chlorine in your pool contaminates are burnt off (oxidized) and when you don't the chlorine combines with these contaminates and comes off as a gas (the chlorine you smell)Does this mean every time you have gone to a public pool and smelled chlorine there wasn't enough chlorine in the pool?- YES !
Step 2

Test your pool water with a good test kit. This kit should test for total as well as free chlorine.As an example you might find a chlorine reading of 2.0 ppm total and 1.0 ppm free. Whenever these two numbers are not the same the pool needs to be shocked. To determine how much shock to add to the pool continue to step 3
Step 3

A "normal" shock (the amount the chlorine products label tells you to use) will raise your chlorine level to aprox. 10 ppm. The amount you need is ten times the difference you found on your chlorine test.In the example we had above we found a 2.0ppm total chlorine and 1.0ppm free chlorine level. The difference is 1.0 so we multiply 1.0 times 10 and get a level of 10.0ppm needed to burn off the contaminates and combined chlorine. So a "normal" shock will do the trick. If however the difference between our readings had been 2.0 we would need a double shock to get the job done. This is why when you have a severe algae problem or cloudy water and shock the pool it doesn't clear the pool up using just the amount on the directions. You must get the chlorine to that ten times the difference level! When you do you have reached what is called "breakpoint" chlorination. The point where the combined chlorine breaks free and the contaminates are burnt off.
Step 4

When shocking your pool with any type of dry product add it to a bucket of water first and then pour it in around the edge of the pool with the pool running. DO NOT pour chlorine into your skimmer (Due to potential chemical reaction with other chlorine products in your feeder) and do not pour chlorine in around metal fittings like your pool light ring. When using liquid chlorine pour it in around the edge of the pool avoiding metal fittings and the skimmer.Whichever product you use follow up with brushing the pool.If you have any questions feel free to contact me me at info@poolrepairguy.com or use the contact page at www.poolrepairguy.com

Comments

rmsandegs said

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on 9/10/2009 You should shock your pool when the chloramine level gets 0.6 or higher, mostly for indoor pools. Get a good FAS-DPD Taylor test kit and test your pool for chloramines. If the reading is 0.0-0.6, you'll be fine.

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