Urine and other chemicals

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cj133

Well-known member
May 6, 2018
701
NJ
Hi all,

My boss is asking me if there's any affordable and practical way to actually filter urine, and whatever chemicals urine breaks down into out of a pool from fc.
I'm guessing something like an RO system could do it, but I'm sure that isn't affordable for a swimming pool. Charcoal filters?

Are there actually systems for this purpose? Do water parks, public pools etc actually do anything other than just dump the water and refill? I don't want to even imagine the amount of urine going into such systems.............

I recall another thread a few years back about just letting the chorine + sun burn it off, but I also recall it not really getting rid of everything?
 
Chlorine will get rid of all of it. No need to do anything extra. Just keep the chlorine on the high side of your range and you will be fine. A household RO system is way too small for use on a pool. A large enough system to do what you want it to do would be cost prohibitive, and it is much too slow. By the time the majority of pool water has passed through the RO system, chlorine will have destroyed it many times over. RO systems also waste a lot of water, so there would be constant topping off of the pool. And it probably would not be legal for a public pool anyway since the RO system would also get rid of your chlorine.

As long as there is chlorine in the water urine does not build up. Public pools rely on chlorine and good filtration to keep water clean. They don't dump water in normal operations.
 
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zea3 said:
Chlorine will get rid of all of it. No need to do anything extra. Just keep the chlorine on the high side of your range and you will be fine. A household RO system is way too small for use on a pool. A large enough system to do what you want it to do would be cost prohibitive, and it is much too slow. By the time the majority of pool water has passed through the RO system, chlorine will have destroyed it many times over. RO systems also waste a lot of water, so there would be constant topping off of the pool. And it probably would not be legal for a public pool anyway since the RO system would also get rid of your chlorine.
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So in theory, if your FC is high, let's say 5ppm with a CYA of 20 and pH of 7.5
When someone pees in the pool the fc completely breaks all of it down and when all is said and done there's absolutely nothing left? No burning eyes, no nothing?
 
You should also be checking for CC. If you have a lot of swimmer waste (be it urine, sweat, sunscreen, ect) you may run with .5-1ppm of CC at any time. You can even go a couple of ppm above your chlorine target safely to help burn off CC. As long as the FC is below slam levels it is safe to swim. You should not have problems with strong chlorine smell or burning eyes as long as the pool is maintained with proper FC levels.
 
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zea3 said:
You should also be checking for CC. If you have a lot of swimmer waste (be it urine, sweat, sunscreen, ect) you may run with .5-1ppm of CC at any time. You can even go a couple of ppm above your chlorine target safely to help burn off CC. As long as the FC is below slam levels it is safe to swim. You should not have problems with strong chlorine smell or burning eyes as long as the pool is maintained with proper FC levels.
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I recall there being comments about the accuracy of the Taylor FAS-DPD for CC at really low levels.

On my own pool which, as far as I know no one pees in from time to time I'll get 1 drop worth of CC, so 0.2ppm. Is this an actual real reading, or just an error?
 
All FC/CC tests using Taylor FAS-DPD are +/- 1 drop. So 0.2ppm is effectively zero.

As far as the general topic goes - urine is the least of any concerns. Unless you’re sitting in a small hot tub with a half dozen drunks, it’s really a non-issue. A residential, single family swimming pool is unaffected by it.
 
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JoyfulNoise said:
All FC/CC tests using Taylor FAS-DPD are +/- 1 drop. So 0.2ppm is effectively zero.

As far as the general topic goes - urine is the least of any concerns. Unless you’re sitting in a small hot tub with a half dozen drunks, it’s really a non-issue. A residential, single family swimming pool is unaffected by it.
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What about if the residential pool has 20 drunks in it?
 

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JoyfulNoise said:
(A) Don’t let 20 drunk people in your pool in the first place; and
(B) That’s what the SLAM Process is for.
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Most of this is just hypothetical, although he did have a party a week ago which is what triggered the discussion.

So after a SLAM and sunlight, all of that urine etc is gone? Chemicals and all? Assuming CC is zero I mean.

He asked how water parks treat water, and I told him I have no idea but it sounds like they rely 100% on chlorine as well for this specific issue?
 
Urine is basically harmless compared to other, ahem, bodily excretions that's almost certainly present in anybody that enters a pool. The main component of urine after water is ammonia, which is almost instantly destroyed by chlorine. In a properly chlorinated pool if someone pees it's essentially nothing but saltwater before it even leaves their swimsuit.

Now, as for those other excretions... Let's just say that if you've passed gas in a pool you have introduced fecal matter in to that body of water. There's a reason I keep my chlorine levels on the upper end of the FC/CYA Levels.

Water parks use extremely vast and expensive systems that include chlorine/bromine, UV (systems that are FAR more powerful than anything on the consumer market), and ozone (again, insanely more powerful than anything on the consumer market). These systems are unlike anything you'd find or need in any residential or even most public pools.
 
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Donldson said:
Urine is basically harmless compared to other, ahem, bodily excretions that's almost certainly present in anybody that enters a pool. The main component of urine after water is ammonia, which is almost instantly destroyed by chlorine. In a properly chlorinated pool if someone pees it's essentially nothing but saltwater before it even leaves their swimsuit.

Now, as for those other excretions... Let's just say that if you've passed gas in a pool you have introduced fecal matter in to that body of water. There's a reason I keep my chlorine levels on the upper end of the FC/CYA Levels.

Water parks use extremely vast and expensive systems that include chlorine/bromine, UV (systems that are FAR more powerful than anything on the consumer market), and ozone (again, insanely more powerful than anything on the consumer market). These systems are unlike anything you'd find or need in any residential or even most public pools.
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I knew urine contains a huge amount of ammonia.
But I never realized peeing in a pool was essentially mixing bleach and ammonia together.

Interesting.

Yes, I realized farts and dirty butts are an issue. Dang people using swimming pools as bidets....
 
mguzzy said:
OK serious part of the post. You can do the FAS/DPD test with different sample sizes and hence the multiplier is different resulting in a different precision:
5 ml sample... 1 drop=1 ppm
10 ml sample... 1 drop=.5 ppm
25 ml sample... 1 drop=.2 ppm
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I knew about the 10 and 25, but never knew you could do a 5ml test.
I assume it requires a different apparatus than the typical one supplied with the K2006 kit? I guess technically anything that can accurately hold 5ml...
 

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