The price of chlorine just keeps going up
Each week it seems the price of chlorine is going up. Wasting chlorine is like throwing money on the ground. Any time you can make your chlorine more effective, you are saving money.
It turns out that chlorination has been used to sanitize water as far back as 1850. England was one of the first to use chlorine to help clean public water supplies as far back as the 1900s. It could even be said that chlorine has saved more lives than antibiotics.
To understand how to avoid wasting chlorine it is important to understand how chlorine works to sanitize water and kill bacteria.
Chlorine is one of the most important chemicals in your pool to keep your pool clean and clear, but chlorine is also fragile. This means that if the chemicals in the pool are not maintained well chlorine will not be able to do its job of sanitizing your pool water.
What are the three most common mistakes that waste chlorine?
- Letting pH get out of range
- Trying to use chlorine to remove nonliving organic waste
- Adding too much stabilizer
The most common mistake that will waste chlorine
Is letting pH get out of range. pH plays a pivotal role in the effectiveness of chlorine. If pH goes too far out of range even with high amounts of chlorine in the water it will be ineffective. Why is this?
To understand why pH is so important you have to understand how chlorine works to kill pathogens such as bacteria and viruses. It does this by breaking the chemical bonds in bacteria’s molecules.
Chlorine is able to break the chemical bonds by the reaction that occurs when it is added to water. Hypochlorous acid (HOCl) which is electrically neutral and hypochlorite ions (OCl-, electrically negative) are formed and these become free chlorine.
Both substances have very distinctive behavior. Hypochlorous acid acid is more reactive and is a stronger disinfectant than hypochlorite. Because Hypochlorous acid has a neutral charge it is able to pass the cell walls and get to the enzymes in the cell and be able to break the bonds.
Hypochlorous acid can penetrate slime layers, cell walls and protective layers of microorganisms and effectively kills pathogens as a result. The microorganisms will either die or suffer from reproductive failure.
The effectiveness of disinfection is determined by the pH of the water. disinfection with chlorine will take place optimally when the pH is between 7.4 and 7,6.
As the water becomes more acidic or the pH drops chlorine becomes more effective, but the water becomes less and less comfortable. If the pH goes more basic or goes above a 7.6 chlorine’s effectiveness starts to drop so that at a pH of 8 it is only 20% effective.
By keeping the pH in range chlorine is more effective and the demand for chlorine drops meaning you will need less chlorine to get the same effect, saving instead of wasting chlorine.
The second mistake that will waste your chlorine
When you use chlorine to remove non-living waste like sun tan lotions, sweat, bather debris, and pollen. All of these things cause the water to become unsanitary and raise the chlorine demand.
The problem is chlorine can sanitize and remove these substances, but chlorine is very inefficient at removing these non-living compounds. Essentially when chlorine is used in this way it tries to oxidize these compounds but in doing this it gets used up so that it can not be used to remove the bacteria.
The most effective way to remove non-living waste compounds is to use enzymes that are designed to efficiently oxidize and remove this type of waste and leave the chlorine to fight the bacteria.
The third common mistake that wastes chlorine
Is too much stabilizer. What is a stabilizer? A stabilizer usually comes in the form of cyanuric acid and its only purpose is to make the chlorine last longer.
An easy way to think about how a stabilizer works to protect chlorine or make it last longer is to visualize a blanket wrapping around chlorine and protecting it from the harmful effects of sun and evaporation.
But if the stabilizer is protecting chlorine how does it waste chlorine?
The quick answer is the blanket that is the stabilizer while protecting the chlorine also prevents it from working.
Digging deeper into how a stabilizer actually works to protect chlorine is important to understand how it also prevents chlorine from doing its job. When a stabilizer is added to the pool it creates a weak nitrogen bond and this will combine with the chlorine molecule. Remember from above it is the chlorine molecule that breaks down into hypochlorous and hypochlorite acids and these are what do all of the sanitization work.
When bacteria are present they have a stronger attraction for the chlorine and this will break the nitrogen bond freeing the chlorine from the stabilizer to attack the bacteria. But because the chlorine was bound up with the stabilizer it will take longer than if there was no stabilizer in the pool.
What will happen with excessive amounts of stabilizer is chlorine is there but it will react slowly and this results in chlorine becoming less effective, or needing more chlorine to do the same amount of work.
So why put in a stabilizer?
Without a stabilizer, chlorine is used up from the sun and evaporation before it has a chance to work resulting in wasted chlorine. The key is the right amount of stabilizer for your pool to get chlorine to last as long as possible without preventing it from doing its job.
The stabilizer stays around.
If you are using cyanuric acid as the stabilizer and this is the most common, it does not dissolve, evaporate, or get picked up by the filters. The only way to reduce the stabilizer levels is to drain and replace the water. And any time you add more stabilizer it is cumulative.
If you are using chlorine tabs many of these have stabilizer in them so you may be adding stabilizer without knowing it.
The takeaway: a high stabilizer level will require a higher amount of chlorine to do the same work and this results in wasted chlorine.
In Summary
With chlorine becoming more expensive every day, you can avoid wasting it by making sure it is working as efficiently as possible. And this starts by avoiding the 3 most common mistakes.
- Don’t let your pH get out of the range of 7.4 to 7.6
- Don’t overuse your chlorine. Regularly dose your pool with enzymes to get rid of the inorganic waste that chlorine can’t handle.
- Pay attention to the stabilizer or cyanuric acid levels. Generally, your chlorine should be 30% of what your stabilizer levels are. A higher stabilizer level requires more chlorine and a lower stabilizer level requires less chlorine.
