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Pool Tip

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.