Chlorine Levels To Cover My Holiday.

[robquick]

Hi,

My chlorine demand in a 24 hour window (in between uses) is about 50%, if I put 1 teaspoon of chlorine in daily my chlorine level will be at about 2.5ppm the same time the following day. If I'm going on holiday for 7 days what prevents me adding a much larger quantity of chlorine that would dissipate to a sensible safe level for my return? Is this a practical theory or am I way off track ?!?!

Any help or guidance appreciated.

Thanks.

[chem geek]

If you have a way to temporarily disconnect the ozonator, then that will help a lot. Also, lowering the water temperature will slow down the rate of loss.

If you wanted to still have 1 ppm FC after 1 week with a 50% loss rate per 24 hours, then you'd need to raise the FC to around 128 ppm FC so obviously impractical. This is why having an ozonator in a chlorine spa isn't very good if you aren't able to dose every day or two, such as if you soak every day or two. If the loss rate were 25% per 24 hours, then you'd only need to raise the FC to 7.5 ppm to have it end up at 1 ppm a week later, so much more practical.

To a small degree, the ozonator may help keep your spa from going south, though technically there may not be enough ozone getting into the bulk water to prevent that and the ozonator and pump are not on all the time anyway. This is why some people use bromine tabs to maintain a background disinfectant level and others use a saltwater chlorine generator such as the http://www.controlomatic.com/technichlor.html'>ControlOMatic TechniChlor.