Portland pool care is important to pool owners that want to make sure their pools last for years to come. In this article, we are going to talk more about pool care as well as the difference between chlorines.

Having your own pool can give you many benefits. If you do not properly clean your pool, it can cause you many problems. That is why you need to understand pool care and how to properly take care of your pool.

Pool Care – What You Need to Know About Chlorine

pool care

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Chlorine is what helps you keep your pool clean. This is why measuring the levels is extremely important. There are different types of chlorine you can use for your pool and understanding them is important. If you do not understand them, you may not know what to test for and how to keep your pool operating properly.

You may have heard the terms “total chlorine” and “free chlorine”. While the pool professionals talking about these terms may understand what they mean, you may be confused. Once you understand the difference between these two, you will be able to track the levels in your pool better.

pool care

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Let’s focus on free and total chlorine today. Free Chlorine is the chlorine you most often test your pool water for. This is the chlorine you use to sanitize your pool and it should have between 1 and 3 ppm in the water. PPM stands for parts per million. Combined Chlorine is the chlorine that is used by the sanitation process of the water. When it is in the water, the chlorine’s ability to sanitize is reduced when you compare it to free chlorine. Total Chlorine is chlorine both free chlorine and combined chlorine.

Pool Care and Understanding Chlorine

When adding chlorine to your pool, it reacts with the water to form hypochlorite ion and hypochlorous acid. This is what we call free chlorine when those compounds form together. Once the chlorine starts reacting with the contaminants in the water it becomes combined chlorine. When it is in this state, the chlorine isn’t going to be as effective as when it is free chlorine. You want to make sure your pool is clean. This is why you need to check on your free chlorine levels.

pool care

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Let’s say you have free chlorine levels and total chlorine levels that are the same. If this is the case, there is no combined chlorine in your water. If your total chlorine level gets higher than the free chlorine level, the difference of these levels is the combined chlorine levels. To ensure your pool is sanitized, your free chlorine needs to be higher than your combined chlorine.

Importance of Pool Care

Making sure you do proper pool care is important or you may end up with challenges you don’t want to deal with. If you need help with your pool care, make sure to reach out to us and we will be glad to help you with any pool questions you have.

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