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high chlorine levels


Guest Karen

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We own the infamous "Easy Set" pool. We noticed a green tinge to the water so got the shock treatment, added a bit extra chlorine to the filter and let it run the night.

Well,now the chlorine level is pretty high,..5.0. Will that make all our skin fall off? Will we wither and get sucked into the flter w/ the rest of the crap?

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  • 1 year later...
We own the infamous "Easy Set" pool. We noticed a green tinge to the water so got the shock treatment, added a bit extra chlorine to the filter and let it run the night.

Well,now the chlorine level is pretty high,..5.0. Will that make all our skin fall off? Will we wither and get sucked into the flter w/ the rest of the crap?

actually 5 ppm is not high at all. In fact, many state health departments allow outdoor commercial pools to be open whenever the free chlorine is below 10 ppm. The recommendations for pools was changed in, I believe, 2005 in light of recent research on kill times for water borne pathogens and now it is recommended that your free chlorine levels never drop below 2 ppm. The old 1-3 ppm was fine for an indoor pool with NO CYA (stabilizer) in the water but as soon as you introduce CYA or use a stabilized form of chlorine (trichlor or dichlor) it becomes necessary to run your free chlorine at higher levels to achieve the same level of sanitation. In fact, if your CYA levels are at around 100 ppm or higher (not uncommon in pool that use pucks and have cartridge filters) you would need to run your free chlorine at 8-15 ppm just to achieve normal sanitation and would need to shock to 25-30 ppm to destroy chloramines and kill algae!

5 ppm is fine!

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Althought 5 ppm of chlorine is not an issue it may cause irritation to the skin and bother the eyes. Another effect high chlorine levels may have is on the bathing suit. It works as a catalyst and may cause your bathing suit to break down much faster than it would normall. It is recommended to to wait a few days to have the cholorine levels come down before using your pool. I recommened the 2-3ppm is a good level

Best,

Opool (http://opool.com)

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Althought 5 ppm of chlorine is not an issue it may cause irritation to the skin and bother the eyes. Another effect high chlorine levels may have is on the bathing suit. It works as a catalyst and may cause your bathing suit to break down much faster than it would normall. It is recommended to to wait a few days to have the cholorine levels come down before using your pool. I recommened the 2-3ppm is a good level

Best,

Opool (http://opool.com)

5 ppm free chlorine is NOT high if you have a normal (30-50 ppm) level of CYA. In fact, at 30 to 50 ppm CYA you SHOULD be running your free chlorine at 3-6 ppm for proper sanitation and algae conrtrol and should be shocking to a minimum of 12 ppm! 2-3 ppm is ok if there is NO CYA in the water such as might be found in an indoor pool or a pool using an ORP controller and a peristaltic pump for dosing liquid chlorine (sodium hypochlorite).

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My wife has personal experience with the effect of high chlorine with respect to CYA levels. Her swimsuits degrade (usually the rubber degrades before the fabric fades) over just one winter use in an indoor pool, but over a summer of use in our outdoor pool there is no degradation whatsoever. This pattern has been repeated for over 3 years now. What's the difference? The indoor pool doesn't use CYA while our outdoor pool does. The FC levels of both pools are probably comparable in the 3 ppm range (maybe more for the indoor pool -- I need to go over to the community center and test it one of these days). Even if both pools had 3 ppm FC, my pool with about 20 ppm CYA has about 1/20th the amount of disinfecting chlorine compared to the indoor pool with no CYA. That's 1/20th the amount of disinfection, oxidation, algae prevention, and swimsuit degradation capability. As waterbear points out, you needn't worry about chlorine levels in a pool with CYA. The actual hypochlorous acid that does the oxidation of swimsuits is FAR lower than found in pools without CYA.

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