| Many pool owners complain
that the swimming pool water is not really clean, but they
can smell the chlorine so there must be enough in the water
to ensure disinfection.
Unfortunately, if you can smell
chlorine, the swimming pool hasn't got enough - strange,
isn't it?! What you can smell are chloramines. These are
formed when insufficient levels of free available chlorine
react with ammonia and other nitrogen-containing compounds
(swimmer waste, sweat, urine, etc.), resulting in their only
being partially broken down (creating halomethanes).
To confirm this, measure the
free available chlorine and total chlorine. You will be able
to calculate the unwanted, irritating combined chlorine
compounds as follows:
Combined chlorine = total
chlorine - free chlorine
You will probably find that
there is little or no free available chlorine and too much
combined chlorine. A chlorine shock treatment or other pool
water sanitiser is necessary to complete the disinfection
and dissipate the combined chlorine.
The combined chlorine in the
pool water can also be destroyed with a non-chlorine shock
if you prefer not to use large quantities of chlorine.
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