Ouch my eyes! My Hospital gym pool hurts

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RecordingBoy

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Dec 21, 2010
3
Hello all
I am new to this board and I wanted to share and ask questions about what happened yesterday at my hospital indoor swimming pool

Yesterday was the 2nd time I went swimming in this pool. Both times I noticed the heavy smell of Combined Chlorine. The water was burning my eyes. after 30 min of swimming mostly underwater I went home and realised my eyes had been hurt. I was unable to work or drive my eyes burned and and were very foggy until I went to sleep at around midnight. I called and asked them what type of system they used and it was a saltwater generator. I didnt complain.
I looked up the Louisiana state sanitary code for swimming pools and it states---free available chlorine no less than .4 ppm and no more than .6 ppm Isnt this too low ? also no provisions for limits for combined chlorine. I was thinking about taking my Taylor 2006 kit and sneaking it in to test the water ---not many people there. any ideas or comments
 
Welcome to TFP! :wave:

It sounds like they have excessive combined chlorine levels. Definitely take your kit there and do a full set of measurements (especially FC, CC and pH though CYA would be useful just in case they are using it, though doubtful). If their chlorine level is too high combined with a pH that is too low, then too much very irritating and volatile nitrogen trichloride will be produced, especially since indoor pools usually don't have any stabilzer (CYA) to moderate chlorine's strength. They might also not be doing enough water dilution for a high bather load, leading to a large buildup of organics (including urea) to oxidize and produce too many disinfection by-products.

The Louisiana Title 51 Public Health Sanitary Code Part XXIV for "Swimming Pools and Natural or Semi-Artificial Swimming or Bathing Places" Chapter 9 "Disinfection and Bacteriological Quality" section §903 "Disinfection" paragraph A states the following:

Disinfection shall be employed in all swimming pools. The disinfection of the water shall be continuous and when chlorine alone is used, the water shall contain at least 0.4 parts per million residual chlorine; or 0.7 parts per million residual chlorine when chlorine with ammonia is used, as determined by the N,N diethel-p-phenylenediamine (DPD) test.
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I can only assume that the reference to 0.7 ppm when chlorine with ammonia is used is referring to monochloramine in the fill water because you can't use monochloramine in a pool for proper sanitation and can't sustain a free chlorine residual for very long as it will oxidize monochloramine. Well, the code could just be bad with regard to using ammonia.

Section §905 "Chemical and Physical Quality of Swimming Pool Water" paragraph A "Chlorination" states the following:

Whenever chlorine, calcium hypochlorite, or other chlorine compounds, without the use of ammonia, are used for swimming pool disinfection, the amount of available or free chlorine in the water at all times when the pool is in use shall not be less than 0.4 ppm., nor more than 0.6 ppm. Whenever chlorine or chlorine compounds are used with ammonia, the amount of available or free chlorine shall not be less than 0.7 ppm., nor more than 1.0 ppm.
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When stabilizer (CYA) is not used, a Free Chlorine (FC) level in the 0.4 to 0.6 ppm range is reasonable, though usually hard to maintain. It is similar to the level in the German DIN 19643 standard of 0.3-0.6 (0.2-0.5 when ozone is also used). The APSP-11 standard has a minimum of 1.0 ppm FC with a recommended minimum of 2.0 ppm FC but they also say not to use any CYA in indoor pools and such FC levels without CYA will be far harsher on skin, swimsuits, hair and also may produce more nitrogen trichloride. I'd recommend 4 ppm FC with 20 ppm CYA along with supplemental oxidation (UV, ozone, non-chlorine shock, enzymes) even for indoor pools, but that's not in any standard.

Richard
 
Thanks for the replys

Well I went to the Gym with my taylor kit Thursday and tested the TC and FC came up eith slightly off the top of the scale somewhere around 8ppm on both not much CC. then the pool guy came in and tested the pool with his Aquachem test strip and he measured 4ppm still a little high I told him my experience with test strips the 2 brands I have always measure low (anybody have any comments?). He said the SWG was malfunctioning and they were adding Chlorine manually. He said the main pool guy had somehow lowered the Chlorine last night?(Wednesday) It must have really been high when it burned my eyes wednesday AM. I went there yesterday and the pool was closed.

Thanks Rick
 
8 ppm FC with zero CYA has an extraordinarily high level of active chlorine and it may have been even higher when you were in the pool. Though normally it is combined chlorine that causes irritation issues, the Free Chlorine (FC) level can get high enough to be irritating on its own, though it could also just be producing more nitrogen trichloride which is very irritating even at levels that wouldn't show up in a test kit (0.02 ppm starts to become irritating). My models show that if there was bather waste equivalent to 0.04 ppm Nitrogen or 0.2 ppm CC, that the nitrogen trichloride would be 0.1 ppm at these high FC levels and that is a VERY irritating amount. At 1 ppm FC, only 0.017 ppm would be produced with that same bather load.

The residential outdoor pools properly managed on this forum have an FC that is usually less than 10% of the CYA level and have active chlorine levels equivalent to less than 0.1 ppm FC with no CYA. The hospital gym pool has over 80 times this amount of active chlorine. Even most indoor pools with no CYA try and keep the FC level well below 2 ppm.

As shown in this post, test strips do not have the resolution, let alone the accuracy, of a good drop-based test kit. They should definitely not be using test strips for most of the water testing.
 
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