How to Maintain Swimming Pool Water Chemistry

When you own a swimming pool, you need to keep the water free of algae, dirt and parasites so everyone stays healthy. You want to keep your pool safe and maintaining it is easy when you understand pool chemistry and test your pool regularly.

Difficulty: Moderate

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Test strips
• Pool chemicals

1. Use pool test strips to test the levels of chlorine, alkaline, pH and bromine. You should test the chemical levels two or three times a week to ensure that swimmers stay safe.

2. Take out a test strip and dip it in the pool water. Make sure the strip is completely submerged. Pull the test strip out of the water and wait 10 seconds. Then compare the test strip to the chart on the container. The color chart shows you what chemicals are unbalanced. Add appropriate chemicals according to the chart on each chemical packaging.

3. Get your water tested by a pool company at the beginning of the season if you had to add a lot of water to the pool when you opened it up for the summer. You may have difficulty determining your chemical levels with the added water and pool stores have better testing equipment. You can usually take the water sample to the pool store where you bought the pool.

4. Maintain the level of water in your pool because water levels affect the chemical balance of the pool. Too much water dilutes the chemicals and too little water makes the chemicals too strong.

5. Recognize common pool problems like green water which means too much algae or smelly water which can be too much chlorine. Cloudiness is common but can have many causes, such as not having the right amount of pH or alkaline.

6. Realize there is daily, weekly, monthly and seasonal maintenance when maintaining swimming pool water chemistry. Test your chemicals daily; vacuum out the debris weekly and take your water to a pool store for professional testing monthly.