Water Balance - Tuning the Pool Triad

The pool. You fill it. Add in your sanitiser and implement your sanitiser management plan. Bring your pH, Total Alkalinity and Hardness level to their ideal levels. Your pool is perfectly balanced. Then you open it up for use… And your perfect pool isn’t perfect anymore.

Your pool water will be constantly changing, everything from the weather to oils, dirt, cosmetics and more will affect your pool water balance readings. Are we sure? Yes, it's any and all things that come in contact with your pool water.

Unbalanced water will exhibit these symptoms:

Swimmers experience eye and skin irritation

Staining of the pool walls

Unsightly wrinkles in vinyl liners

Interferes with the efficiency of your biocide

Corrosion of metals (pump seals, heaters, lights, etc.)

Cloudy water

Scale build up (white chalky appearance) on pool surface as well as inside filter and heater

Pitting and corrosion of gunite/concrete pools

Pool Water balancing is all about the relationships between three chemical measurements: pH, Total Alkalinity and Hardness. At first glance, this may seem complicated, but we’re here to simplify things. Join us over the next three articles as we delve into more detail on each of these measurements with you.

Some people in the business may also define ‘water balance’ as your pool water being either corrosive or having a high level of scaling. This use of ‘water balance’ is greatly affected by the Hardness of your water and the products added to it.

Corrosive pool water seeks to leech minerals from everything it comes into contact with as it hasn’t reached a level ‘saturation’ of minerals. If your pool water is corrosive it will start to attack and deteriorate mechanical parts, your heaters and pumps… even your pool walls.

A pool at the opposite end of the spectrum has scaling issues. This is where your pool water has more minerals than it can hold leaving behind scale on any surface it comes into contact with, also know as ‘oversaturated’. It’s very similar to having lime scale in your kettle. Either kind of ‘unbalanced water’ is not only bad for the health of your pool and mechanical systems, it greatly affects swimmer enjoyment!

Water balancing is on par with the proper use of biocides for your health and safety as well as the effective management of water. It makes sense that they both work hand in hand. In fact, the pH of your pool has a direct impact on the amount you use and how effective your biocide is! We’ll go into this and more in greater detail next week when we cover pH, the art of being neutral.

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