Cloudy Pool Water
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Cloudy swimming pool water is the number one complaint from pool owners who are seeking help with their water chemistry. More than any other problem you can have with your swimming pool water, cloudy water is the most common problem which sends pool owners searching for an answer either online or from a pool and spa water test lab. The reason why cloudy water is so common is simply because it is easy to do. If you let your chlorine level, or your effective chlorine level drop to zero then you will probably end up with cloudy water. It happens very quickly. You can go to bed one night with clear water in the pool and wake up to cloudy pool water by morning.
The technical cause for cloudy pool water is plant matter (algae) is beginning to proliferate within the water. Without a chemical sanitizer to kill living plant matter that ends up in the water you would quickly experience growth of plant matter. The first step in this process (other than having no chemical sanitizer to prevent this) would be cloudy water. If corrective action is not taken at this point then the next thing would be the cloudy water begins to turn green. Want to know how green pool water can get? Check out this funny article on the shades of green pool water.
There are a number of different reasons why pool water turns green but at the heart of each of these problems is simply the fact that there is nothing preventing the plant matter from growing. A pool, technically speaking, is stagnant. Stagnant water, like a swamp for example, is pretty well known to be green. If you have no chemical sanitizer in a stagnant body of water it will turn into a green swamp. It happens faster than you might think and the first step of that is...you guessed it - cloudy water.
Preventing cloudy pool water with chlorine - There are four main reasons why chlorine is used as a chemical sanitizer in swimming pools. Chlorine is a sanitizer, an oxidizer, an algicide and it has the ability to develop and hold a residual in the water. The chlorine prevents plant matter from growing or bacteria, organic debris etc. from living in the water. If the sanitizer (chlorine) level drops to zero, or is prevented from working for another reason (high phosphates, high combined chlorine, high CYA) then organic growth begins immediately. Some situations like with high phosphate levels can result in extremely fast organic growth as the phosphates act as an unlimited food source for the plant matter. This is why it is important to monitor all of your pool chemistry levels, and ignoring important things like CYA, pH, phosphates or other important variables can easily result in cloudy water in your pool.
To solve cloudy pool water you need to double check all of your pool chemistry variables and you should probably clean you filter since you have a high amount of organic debris in the pool already causing it to go cloudy. Once you have established a proper baseline water chemistry you can increase the chlorine level to kill the algae and organic growth in the water.
For most pools a slightly elevated chlorine level after balancing the remaining chemistry solves the problem. For pools with more cloudy water you may need to vacuum to waste the next day following a heavy chlorine treatment to remove the dead plant matter that has fallen to the floor.
Learn HOW to ask for help with pool water chemistry
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Swimming Pool Steve is an award winning, second generation swimming pool specialist from Ontario Canada and one of the most trusted voices in the swimming pool industry. With over 20,000,000 views on the Swimming Pool Steve YouTube Channel, winner of the Pleatco Pool & Spa Industry Leadership award and author of hundreds of pool and spa articles both online and in print. Steve is committed to helping pool and spa owners as well as pool and spa industry workers learn more about the technical side of building, renovating, repairing and maintaining all types of swimming pools and spas. Follow Swimming Pool Steve on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.
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