New Gunite Pool Chlorine Alternatives

[lwiilt]

Having a pool built, I teach self-rescue lessons to young children and really do not like chlorine as I am in the water 3-4 hours daily. I am researching chlorine alternatives and wanted some feedback/advice. Anyone have experience with: Green Smart, TechnoPure, Ecosmarte or any other systems that either uses no chlorine or significantly reduces that amount of chlorine? Pool builder offers Nature 2 products and Intellichlor salt generator, but has said they will install whatever I want.

[txpoolguy]

Over the past 50 years, lots of alternatives have been introduced, but chlorine (bleach, trichlor, dichlor, cal hypo, etc.) remains the best sanitizer available, for the most "reasonable" cost. Nothing else treats the different kinds of bacteria, virus, algae, etc., that are seen in swimming pools. Bromine is an alternative, but becomes harder to maintain than chlorine.

In my opinion, the electronic chloine generators or SWGs are the least trouble, and may or may not be cheaper, long term. However, swimming in "softened" water is the biggest reason you might choose the SWG, regardless of brand. Goldline has been doing it longer than anyone else, and is my preference.

I like the Nature2 product, but would recommend it as an addition to chlorine, rather than an alternative. Same with ozonators, magnets, frog, etc. Avoid biguanides like Baquacil and other brands at all cost.

The "green" movement has huge numbers of "alternatives" in the market, but you're ultimately better off with chlorine, considering that you're working with children, and that you're in the pool 4 hours daily. Most of these alternatives have been around for decades, but can't compete with the sanitizing ability of chlorine. If they could, chlorine would have been gone 20 years ago.

[chem geek]

You can minimize the amount of "active" chlorine (hypochlorous acid) by having a higher Cyanuric Acid (CYA) level, say 80 ppm, with a lower Free Chlorine (FC) level, say 1 ppm though with lots of children in the water 2 ppm would be better. You'll need to use a supplemental algaecide to prevent algae growth, either PolyQuat 60 weekly or a phosphate remover (or even 50 ppm Borates would help). A copper-based algaecide or copper ion system would work to prevent algae, but can stain if overdosed or if the pH rises. At this low an active chlorine level, the effect of chlorine will be minimal and is technically equivalent to around 0.01 to 0.02 ppm FC with no CYA.

You can't compare pools with CYA to those without, such as most indoor pools, since pools without CYA are typically way over-chlorinated. 1-2 ppm FC with no CYA had at least 10-20 times as much active chlorine as a typical outdoor pool with CYA and what I'm proposing above has around 100 times lower active chlorine levels than most indoor pools.

If you don't use chlorine, then even with metal ion alternatives the kill time for pathogens is slower and the risk of person-to-person transmission of disease is higher. For a personal residential pool that might be OK (i.e. a personal choice), but for a commercial/public pool it isn't allowed and for a pool used by many people as in your situation it isn't wise.

[waterbear]

Here is a link to some useful info on 'alternative sanitizers'

http://www.troublefreepool.com/alternative...ruth-t3025.html

[boffo]

We use ecosmarte but from what I have read it is not advisable for public pools. Indeed in Canada and other parts of the world it is not legal to maintain a public pool without using a microorganism and bacteria inhibitor such as chlorine.

Ecosmarte website does show the system being used commercially but at higher copper settimgs see

http://www.ecosmarte.com/r_o.html#comm_hb

Having installed and run ecosmarte for two seasons in a private pool - a few comments

It is much harder work to maintain ecosmarte than chlorine but it is definitely much more pleasant to swim in a chlorine free pool.

At start up however with ecomsarte we have to add huge quantities of Calcium Flake and Muriatic Acid to achieve correct hardness and PH repectively. Throughout the season we have to regularly add more Muriatic Acid and non-chlorine shock.

A Chlorine system works by essentially killing harmful organisms and bacteria with bleach - essentially the dilute chlorine turns into hypochlorous acid (HOCl) and hypochlorite ions which kill those microorganisms and bacteria.

Ecosmarte by contrast by demanding a low PH environment to work, essentially means that muriatic acid (hydrochloric acid) has to be added instead of chlorine which when used with the ecosmarte copper electrode, produces copper hydrochloride and other copper derivatives and copper based acids which (together with the titanium oxidiser) seem to inhibit bacteria and organisms in much the same way as chlorine;s hypochlorous did but without the chlorine smell or taste.

It does not however seem to prevent all such organisms since we have had several outbreaks of algae despite copper being at correct levels. We have also found the filter needs much more maintenance and the water (at times of high outside temperature) can smell and turn cloudy. It also turns children's hair green so toxic copper levels may be a problem. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copper_toxicity

Contrary to Ecosmarte's guidelines if run at normal levels it does not produce drinking quality water since (in the UK) this demands less than 2ppm of copper and Ecosmarte is running at over 5 ppm. For a child drinking half a liter of swimming water this would give them 5 times the recommended level of daily copper - tests on pigs have shown high copper intake lead to obesity and medical reports show copper toxicity can lead to liver damage and can be fatal in sheep.

Lastly having done more research ecosmarte does seem a very expensive way of adding copper to the pool. See for instance an alternative Nature 2 http://tinyurl.com/lazspy which adds silver (more effective than copper) at about $200 plus $200 per season.

[billp]

Having a pool built, I teach self-rescue lessons to young children and really do not like chlorine as I am in the water 3-4 hours daily. I am researching chlorine alternatives and wanted some feedback/advice. Anyone have experience with: Green Smart, TechnoPure, Ecosmarte or any other systems that either uses no chlorine or significantly reduces that amount of chlorine?

The Ecosmarte website takes a lot of space to badmouth salt water systems. A lot of what they have to say is distorted, wrong & misrepresented. I am always suspicious of products marketed on fear.

They use copper-oxygen to treat the pool. Now to have a "chemical free" pool you can't be adding copper. Think about it...

Copper kills bacteria and algae but in a typical pool that gets use and especially in high use commercial pools most of the work that needs to be done chemically is oxidation. Most of the chlorine used in these pools is for oxidation, not sanitation. This is why the copper based systems have to use a non-chlorine shock (another chemical being added to our "chemical free" system).

Chlorine gets its bad name from mismanagement for the most part. All of the typical complaints come from improper/inadequate chlorine usage. And people who spend hours a day in the water forget that we have mammal skin, not fish skin.

I have found that instructors who spend hours a day in the pool like salt water systems better. They claim they can tell the difference.

Now here is another little detail the "chlorine free" promoters don't tell you (and likely don't even know). If you install one of these systems on a pool without changing the water, you already have salt in the pool from previous chlorine use. So now as this salt passes their electrodes guess what is happening? They are splitting some salt and making chlorine! So more of their success than they may want to admit may be from the chlorine. If you put in fresh water this won't happen... until you have kids in there 3-4 hours a day. People bring a lot of salt into the pool (sweat & urine) so your fresh water will soon become a mildly salty "salt water pool" again. So instead of trying to avoid chlorine, find the best way to use it. Just my opinion.

(And yes I ran the theoretical numbers on salt contributions by people and did real life experiments and by golly people leave a LOT of salt behind!)

Oh and this nonsense about NASA and the astronauts. The reason this stuff worked for them is because they weren't SWIMMING in their drinking water!