Fecal Accidents

[Rhumbline]

Hello all,

I want to start by saying thank you. This forum has been amazing in teaching me the details of what is going on in my pool and I am now saving a lot of money using household chemicals rather than overprices pool store stuff. If there are other newbys reading this, buy a Taylor K-2006 testkit and then start reading this forum to save lots of money.

So that said, I'm now coming to you with a question that I cannot answer through old posts. We have an infant and a 22 month old and so I am sure that it is just a matter of time before we have a "poop in the pool" incident. I know that the neighborhood pools shut down for a day when this happens and the pools where they give swimming lessons just shut down for an hour. So I am interested in understanding what the processes are.

I reviewed the CDC website information at this site:

http://www.cdc.gov/healthyswimming/fecalacc.htm

It seems that of the two important things to worry about are Giardia and Crypto. From what I read it boils down to that Crypto is not found in hard stool and thus with a hard stool situation you can wait 30-60 minutes (depending on chlorine level) and this will kill off Giardia and the other bacteria in hard stool.

When diahrea is in play you have Crypto in the equasion and then you need to wait 9600 minutes at 1 ppm chlorine or less if you raise the chlorine level (where ppm * minutes = 9600) with a minimum of 8 hours at 20 ppm.

So the question is, how do you deal with the common situation of baby poop in the pool. Having two kids, I know that their *** rarely produces hard stool, but it is also not a diareha either. In addition, you normally have the kid in swim diapers which contain most of the poop until it breaks up. Thus when I have seen these situations in other pools the result is 90% of the material in the kids diaper and just some little stuff (usually not poop looking) which gets in to the pool. (sorry if any of this is a bit gross)

So my question is, do you deal with this as a hard stool situation or a soft stool situation? You don't really get a chance to see the diaper usually and if you are the parent you know that the sample has been badly compromised by the time you see it. So anyone who knows how professionals deal with this situation might be able to shed some light here to a homeowner who would like to keep his swimmers healthy.

As a side note, I'm also interested in any science behind urine in the pool. You must know that this is a common occurance and that a proper chlorine level eliminates any risk. However, I have one swimmer who is very concerned about kid urinating in the pool and it would be nice to show some evedence that a little pee in the pool is not a problem.

Sorry for the lond post and thanks again for all the great information you all share.

[prawny]

The CDC make the distinction between hard and soft stool for a few reasons. First to scoop a solid is easy and the total surface area exposed to the pool is low. Secondly they reason that a person having a diarrhea incident in the pool is much more likely to be ill. That is why they call for the high PPm Cl2 burn time after a loose stool incident. Most municipal pools that have a warm tot pool will keep their chlorine levels higher in there knowing the chances of an incident are high. That way it is easy to kick the Cl level a bit higher when it becomes necessary.

The same principal applies to the urine issue as the ammonia in it readily bonds to your free chlorine and makes combined Cl. If the kids will be peeing in there alot then you need to keep free Cl higher and even perhaps shock more regularly if it becomes necessary.

[chem geek]

The 9600 CT (chlorine in ppm times time in minutes) number is with chlorine and ZERO CYA. You don't have any hope of killing Crypto by chlorine alone in a pool with CYA in it. At 30 ppm CYA, there is roughly 1/30th the amount of disinfecting chlorine as in a pool with the same FC and no CYA. Only when the FC level gets close to the CYA level do you get reasonably high levels of disinfecting chlorine.

You have to raise the FC level to about 16 ppm at 30 ppm CYA (a little more than 50% of the CYA level) to get the equivalent of 1 ppm FC with no CYA at a pH of 7.5 (so you need to lower the pH first before increasing the FC to get the same effect).

The good news is that in a residential pool, Crypto and Giardia are very unusual unless you throw large pool parties with sick individuals. It's more common in commercial pools due to the larger number of bathers and fewer controls of who gets to swim. In many commercial pools, additional methods are used to deal with Crypto and Giardia (such as chlorine dioxide, ozone, and UV).

As for urine, you don't have to worry about that nearly as much as fecal accidents. Urine is relatively "clean". Yes, the urea is an ammonia-like compound, but you don't generally introduce bacteria, viruses or protozoan cysts via urine (or via sweat either). Urea doesn't actually form combined chlorine measured in a CC test. Instead, chlorine slowly oxidizes it forming transient chloramines, but this process might be sped up by sunlight (not sure about that since no CCs are measured).

Richard