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POOL A Pool Water Balancing Program by Joe McDaniel 209 Oak Avenue Baltimore, MD 21208 Purpose POOL is designed to aid in the management of a swimming pool by performing the calculations to achieve a "balanced" pool. Balancing a pool is desirable for several reasons: the Ph will remain much more stable, the pool itself (whether lined, painted, or plastered) and the filtering equipment will last longer and filter runs (between backwashing or cleaning of filters) will be longer. In general, balancing requires only a relatively few dollars and results in great savings of time, chemicals, and money. Testing the Water To use the POOL program, it will be necessary to have the ability to perform tests on your pool for free chlorine, total chlorine, Ph, total alkalinity, calcium hardness, and cyanuric acid (or stabilizer) levels. The Taylor Chemicals, Inc. test kit model 2000 with the 2001 - Total Alkalinity Test Pack, the 2002 - Cyanuric Acid Test Pack, and the 2003 - Calcium Hardness Test Pack is very suitable. Other companies make similar test kits which will also work. The cheap test kits sold at Murphy Mart, etc. are not suitable! Perform all the necessary tests, following the instructions with your test kit. Record the readings for entry into the POOL program. POOL will also ask for your pool temperature. A pool thermometer is desirable but a guess is sufficient. Using the POOL Program POOL is run by entering the command: BASIC POOL with the POOL program on the same disk as BASIC. If you have gotten this far (by getting POOL from a BBS) you should be able to figure out how to run POOL under other circumstances. POOL will prompt you to enter all required readings. After entry, POOL will perform the calculations necessary to balance your pool water. The recommended actions should always be examined for reasonableness. If the amounts of water to pump out or the chemicals to add seem wrong, recheck the input to the program, redo the tests, or consult your pool manual. (The Taylor test set comes with a very handy reference manual for pool management.) The possibility of errors in the POOL program is always present. If one of the actions is to drain some of the water and refill, do not add any other chemicals before refilling, retesting, and running POOL again. 1 Disclaimers, References, Etc. POOL started out as a program published by Olin Corporation in their POOLIFE magazine. (Mailed to all pool owners free of charge. Address is Poolife, 120 Long Ridge Road, Stamford, CT 06904-1355) The original program has been modified and enhanced for my own needs and to remove somewhat the use of only HTH brand (sold by Olin) chemicals. The original program used some rather gross estimates for some values and the Taylor figures have been integrated where there are any differences. The suggested doses have been computed for HTH brand and generic chemicals in most cases. For initial balancing, large amounts of Calcium Chloride and Sodium Bicarbonate will be needed (if you have a large pool). Using HTH or any other brand chemicals is a waste of money, generally. Go to a local chemical supplier (most in Baltimore, MD where I live seem to sell cleaning supplies) and buy large quantities of these two chemicals. I buy by the 100 pounds and the costs are about $20 per 100 pounds of each. Cyanuric Acid may be available as a generic rather than as a branded version. In any case, only a few (up to 20 pounds) will generally be needed although the cost is high (per pound). Chlorine is quite expensive as Calcium Hypochlorite. By stabilizing (using Cyanuric Acid) you can reduce the quantities needed considerably. Also, the use of stabilized chlorine (also know as tri-chlor and hundreds of other names) will reduce the quantities needed (on a poundage basis) although the cost per pound is higher. The savings will usually be greater than when using Calcium Hypochlorite (HTH, for instance). Again, generic tri-chlor is available. I have had good success for the last two years using Potassium Monopersulfate instead of "shock" treating my pool. This chemical reacts with the chloramines to oxidize them, releasing the chlorine into the water for reuse. The standard treatment for chloramines is to superchlorinate by adding something like 10 ppm of chlorine. This is expensive and injurious to solar covers, etc. The Potassium Monopersulfate is cheap and very effective. The only drawback so far has been that the DPD type test kits (like the Taylor) are not compatible (for total chlorine, at least) with potassium monopersulfate. This is not too much of a problem since the need for total chlorine testing is largely eliminated by having the chemical in the water and oxidizing chloramines continuously. I bought my supply from Leslie's (a mail order pool supplier) and have used only about 20 pounds a year - far less than the amount of chlorine chemical that would have been required. The adjustments suggested by the POOL program for Ph are better determined by use of the Taylor test kit's acid and base demand reagents. The Taylor method is to add drops of acid or base reagents to determine how much acid or base will be required to achieve the correct Ph directly rather than by calculation. 2 This technique is more accurate than a calculated method. If your test kit has this feature, it is a better way to maintain Ph than by using the POOL program's calculations. I use an automatic feeder for my chlorine (stabilized trichlor). This has the advantage of maintaining a more constant level of chlorine in the water, thereby reducing the chlorine usage and problems with algae, bacteria, etc. The floating feeder types are also effective and very cheap - they just can't be used with solar covers. The prices in the Leslie's catalog are often better than those from local stores, even with the costs of United Parcel Service added in. I have found that some local stores, when confronted with the catalog in hand, will match the prices from Leslie's. One claim from the stores is that their product is better than the generic one from Leslie's (other companies also sell by mail order and have similar pricing). I believe that this claim is generally without foundation. I haven't investigated, but I'll bet that virtually all the companies buy from only one or two manufacturers and that the final products differ mostly in packaging. In any case, I have had no problems with the generic chemicals offered by Leslie's or by my local store when pressed to match the price from Leslie's. My pump motor recently had to be replaced. (Age and occasional immersions from being below ground and pool level killed it.) The prices from the pool companies (including Leslie's) were about $120. I called a local industrial electric motor repair company (Electric Motor in Baltimore) and got estimates of $50 to $80! Again, if you are willing to do a little work to bypass the middlemen such as the pool company (or even Leslie's), you can save a lot. Buy a winterizing cover if your pool is large enough to justify the costs. The cost of the cover will be recovered quickly in lower costs for balancing chemicals (especially Cyanuric Acid) and water (and sewage) charges. In the fall, you cover your pool after lowering the water level to below the skimmer. The cover keeps out leaves and dirt. In the spring, you clean off the cover and remove it. Your pool water may look cloudy, etc. but with the filter running and some vacuuming, it will be sparkling in about a day. Once you have refilled the pool, do the tests and run the POOL program to rebalance the water. The amounts of Calcium Chloride, Sodium Bicarbonate, and Cyanuric Acid will be relatively small since all you need to balance is the water just used to refill back to operating levels, not the entire water quantity. A side benefit is that some pools will pop right out of the ground if emptied where the water level is high. I offer this program and these notes without claiming to be an expert or that there are no errors, omissions, faults, etc. My own pool (18 by 42 feet, concrete construction, painted, 40000 gallons) has been better managed using this program and the 3 techniques and sources mentioned above. When I'v had problems, Taylor Chemical, Leslie's, Poolife, and my local chemical and pool stores have been of value. I have been operating the pool for 6 seasons now and the above are the results of my experiences and mistakes. I now believe that my knowlege of pool management and of sources for answers is sufficient enough so that I purchase on price, not level of support. (This is analogous to buying your computer by mail order.) My costs for operating the pool have been lower each year, even with inflation.