TizMe~

Was wondering if you bought the salt yet and how the Mrs. TizMe likes it?

Not yet Casey. We are getting it this weekend. We have been very busy and havent even been in the pool at all this week! After we add it I will post her reaction ....

I put in a SWG this year; we had Baquacil in the past because myself and my kids will break out sometimes after being in a pool (especially public pools)...and so far, after 2+ months of converting to BBB and then SWG, the salt water/low chlorine seems to work great for us!
Very fortunate that it worked out for us, I'd recommend to 'sensitive skin' types like us!

the salt sounds interesting, i keep hearing how good the water feels, but i'm wondering..can you taste it? i really can't stand the taste of ocean water & can't even open my eyes after it hits me..assuming the amount added to a pool would not be enough to notice hopefully?

Last week I added 80 lb of salt to my pool. It does feel softer on the skin.

@ colormesummer:

We have a salt concentration of ~1200 ppm in our pool and we can't taste it. In comparison, the salinity of ocean water is 35,000 ppm, give or take.

Right, even with a SWG the concentration is less than 4,000, so you can barely taste salt, but nothing like ocean water. The salinity is even lower than your eye's tears, so it doesn't hurt your eyes, either.

TizMe -- What happened when you added salt to the water? I am curious if it helped your wife or not. I am adding salt this weekend IF I can get to the store. I have severe psoriasis; over 50% skin coverage (no folks, it's not contagious) and a few other auto-immune disorders, and I was hoping the salt helped her. I got the pool because I haven't been swimming in over 4 years, due to hating my skin and the way it looks, but I am so afraid of throwing the chemicals out of balance (knock on wood) that I was hesitant to add anything!

We never did get the salt added to the water and she hasnt mentioned it again. She has whats called PBC (Primary biliary cirrhosis) which is a liver disease and one of the symptoms of the disease is itching of the skin. SO, were not sure if thats what it was or not but she hasnt mentioned it lately.
We will consider adding salt next year to the pool since its getting so late in the swimming season this year.

You may want to try a chlorine free shock. I have used them to control irritation from chloromines in some of my more sensitive customers pools and gotten great reveiws. Although I haven't persoanally tried it. 2 lbs of ~40% potassium monosulfate should treat 20k gal.

Please read the Pool School articles - particularly the one on myths and the one on shocking your pool. I'm sure it's unintentional, but you are spreading some misinformation here.

Thank you for your help. Regardless of what your "pool school" (or should it be called pool bible?) says, I have taken a call or two over the years from some of my many residential customers about irritation due to perceived "over" chlorination and I stand behind my statement.

One of my employee's family members was suffering from burning eyes and we treated his pool. He reported that after the treatment the irritation was gone and the water felt smoother, much like the water in a scg pool.

By any chance was this sensitive customer's pool an indoor pool? That's a situation where chloramines are seen to build up more frequently since there is no sunlight to help break them down nor good air circulation to remove some of the disinfection by-products. Also, in most indoor pools, CYA is not used so essentially such pools are effectively over-chlorinated by orders of magnitude which can lead to more disinfection by-products. Non-chlorine shock (MPS) might be helpful in such situations though use of a small amount of CYA (20 ppm) could help as well though that is as of yet unproven (not enough people have tried it, though the chemistry implies it will help).

In outdoor pools exposed to sunlight, proper maintainance of FC levels relative to CYA (i.e. following the Chlorine / CYA Chart) usually prevents combined chlorine from registering in significant quantities. My wife is very sensitive to chemicals, but our pool always measures < 0.2 ppm CC and she swims in our pool almost every day without complaint (about the chemicals, at least ).

Richard

Richard you seem to have a wealth of information when it comes to pool chemicals and balances. What do you do for a living? If you don't mind me asking.

By the way these are outdoor pools that generally have cyas above 80-100 ppm.

So unless the FC levels were pretty low in the high CYA outdoor pools or unless the bather load was higher, there normally isn't CC seen so that's strange. Perhaps they had an unusual amount of irritating organics (lotions) and the MPS shock oxidized it faster than chlorine. This might be another case where the use of enzymes (as you had proposed in another thread) could be useful. It may also be that they sweat a lot since monochloramine forms very quickly but breaks down more slowly so having MPS in the water can have the MPS oxidize the ammonia faster than the chlorine. [EDIT] At low bather loads, it's not enough to show up as CC but it's concentrated on the skin so perhaps is irritating to some. [END-EDIT]

I'm not a chemist, though majored in chemistry and physics at Cal-Berkeley years ago. I'm in the computer industry (mostly S/W), but got back into chemistry when I ran into problems in my own pool about 4 years ago (after one and a half seasons). The pool stores weren't of much help and I figured "how hard could this be?" so dusted off some old books, called up some people at the university to see if there was anything earth-shatteringly new in equilibrium chemistry (there wasn't) and then went to work figuring this stuff out.

During the middle of this period of time, I found The Pool Forum, had some communication with Ben Powell, and learned the practical side to balance the theoretical side I was working on (Evan/waterbear and others keep me honest in this regard to this day ). As complicated as these things sound, it's really not more than 1st year college chemistry at least as far as the chlorine/CYA relationship is concerned. Yes, doing the spreadsheet was extraordinarily tedious, but straightforward (i.e. it's not quantum physics).

Richard

The following applies only to outdoor pools. MPS is one way to compensate for low FC levels relative to the CYA level. When CYA gets high the required FC level gets higher. If the required FC level is not maintained it is likely that CC can develop, which will tend to cause skin irritation. MPS is one way to get rid of the CC in that situation. However it is simpler and less expensive to simply raise the FC level to a level appropriate for the CYA level, which will eliminate the CC.

Indoor pools are different. MPS is generally a good choice for indoor pools.

A final note on MPS. It IS a sensitizer and many people report itching or redness from it's use.(mostly in spas where the MPS is used at a higher level.)

kiksroks, I work in the industry also (retail pool/spa supply sales and commercial pool maintenance) and I have to disagree with your stand on several things such as the continual use of dichlor in residential pools (In commercial pools that are always vacuumed to waste and have DE filters that are cleaned once or twice daily there is enough water exchange to dilute the CYA), and the use of MPS in outdoor pools (which I DO have experience with). Also, like Chemgeek, I have a chemistry background from college but my degree is in a different area.