How to Maintain a Bromine Pool

JPMorgan said:

Starting to question that myself.... especially if we are not on the same page about testing and maintenance. If the pool company and I were seeing eye to eye, then it might be a different story, but since you are telling me that the titration test is the more accurate test.... and we are getting readings that are quite far apart between the two tests.... then I may just bow out of this altogether unless they agree to use the titration test. I doubt they will.... takes a little more time.... and expect I will hear "we have always done it this way".

Question: So, if they are measuring bromine at 3-4 ppm using the color comparator test and I get 12-13 ppm with the titration test, is it even safe to go in the pool? The water looks good.... very clear.... but is it unsafe/ unhealthy if bromine is at 12? What are the potential harmful effects. Now I'm wondering if I even want to be in that pool.... or have my grandkids in there.

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It’s hard to say what the exact breakdown is between active bromine and combined bromine (bromamines). Typically speaking, simple bromamines are not as irritating to a lot of people like chloramines are. They’re not totally benign either. But it’s not unlike any other communal swimming pool - you might come out smelling like chlorine or with red, irritated eyes but it isn’t going to kill you. And kids (grandkids) are notoriously tolerant of even the nastiest of swimming pool waters.

Their reported low values compared to your higher values is likely due to their test bleaching out if they are using a DPD test. You can pickup a cheap OTO (yellow) sanitizer test and see what result that gives as OTO is less prone to bleaching out. If the OTO shows a darker yellow/orange color, then the sanitizer is on the high side. You can’t really trust the OTO number/color scale much beyond that though as it is notoriously inaccurate. Clear is no sanitizer, light-straw yellow is low sanitizer, taxi cab yellow is moderate/high sanitizer and anything that approaches orange/brown is very high sanitizer. That’s about the best you can get from OTO.

You can’t have a rational discussion with pool service companies. They are going to manage a pool as they see fit to satisfy regulations and their profit/bottom-line. That pool is just a dollar-figure to them and they could care less about the water quality as long as the pool water is clear and no one in charge (aka, the property owner) is bothering them. As I said above, most people tolerate very low quality pool water well enough that they just attribute any ill-effects to it being a “swimming pool”. Most people are conditioned to expect swimming pools to be gross and don’t think much beyond that. TFP ruins that blissful ignorance by showing people that pool water can be quite easy to make both sanitary and enjoyable. This is why most TFP’ers will never step foot in a public pool or even a neighborhood pool. I, personally, can’t stand water parks or public pools any longer and force my wife to trudge around with the kids while I relax in a lounge chair answering questions about pools on TFP

I don’t know about any of the other stuff but our aquatic center that has the fleet of dolphins is only indoor pools. I would imagine they collect lots of bandaids & who knows what else

CSI is unaffected by sanitizer type so you can track everything you need in PoolMath except for bromine. For bromine, you'll just have to imagine that the letters "FC" stand for total bromine ...

If you're going to raise the CH I would NOT add all 13lbs of calcium chloride at once. Add it in small batches (a few pounds scattered/broadcast over the pool surface with lots of brushing) over several days or else you will cloud up the pool.

To lower total bromine levels, you'll need to either turn down or turn off the bromine tablet feeder and monitor the TB levels daily, or even twice daily. You can use liquid chlorine to maintain the bromine levels since the water likely has a lot of spent bromide in it. You simply add enough LC to achieve the TB level that you want based on how much loss you're seeing per day. The reaction between chlorine and bromide is very fast so you can simply add the chlorine, brush the pool, wait 30-45 mins with the pumps running and then retest. You can use the automated bromine feeder if you want, but you need to keep an eye on bromine levels and pH as the tablets are slightly acidic.

Maintain all levels according the local department of health regulations and keep very detailed logs. If ever there is a complaint or an issue with the water and someone decides to call the health department, the first thing they are going to ask for are records of chemical maintenance. Check local requirements as you may have to maintain paper records with signatures.

As for a robot, up to you. They're kind of overkill for an indoor pool but if you can convince the property owner to get a simple one then it keeps you from having to manually vacuum all the time.

You can't really turn off a bromine tablet feeder because the tablets are already wet and they will continue to dissolve.

This creates a nasty, toxic, corrosive stew of chemicals in the feeder that will destroy the feeder and the mix will create a giant slug of corrosive liquid that will go into the system when the feeder valve is opened or into the air when the top is removed.

I would get off of bromine and switch to chlorine by using liquid chlorine or a SWG.

You are just adding more and more DMH using tabs and you do not know what the level is.

I would just treat it as chlorine and forget that the bromine ever existed.

Or, drain and refill to get rid of the bromide and DMH.

It really does not matter if you treat it as chlorine or bromine because they should be roughly equivalent at the same molarity, which is independent of the weight or mass.

How many total pounds of bromine tabs have been used since the pool was last filled?

CH is important to a Plaster based pool, does not matter its location.

Does the Association really care if you drain/refill? You can tell them the water logs have not been kept well and that they are liable. Starting fresh would help mitigate this. I can see they all would be in favor.

It’s a bromine pool (with an unknown amount of bromide and DMH in the water) so the sanitizer reading should be assumed to be total bromine when adding chlorine. The reason being is that the chlorine reacts immediately with the bromide to form sanitizing bromine. Given that there is likely a very large concentration of bromide ions in the water from all the tab use, bromine will be the primary sanitizer.

I would still check for CC levels because bromine systems do build up combined oxidizer levels that will test as CC (CB) and not FC (FB).

JamesW said:

I would still check for CC levels because bromine systems do build up combined oxidizer levels that will test as CC (CB) and not FC (FB).

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You won’t be able to distinguish combined bromine from free bromine. Test kits only measure total bromine. There may be CCs when adding chlorine but if the CCs are strong enough oxidizers, they will possibly convert bromide to bromine. This is the problem with bromine sanitation - you have no idea what the actual sanitizer is and you can not distinguish combined from free sanitizer. Also, bromine can be oxidized to bromates which are carcinogens.

Honestly, this indoor pool is a royal PITA in terms of chemical maintenance. Anyone responsible for its upkeep is, at best, just guessing that it is ok. It’s all downside in my opinion because someone is going to complain and cause a fuss at some point and the person holding the keys will be the one that gets the blame. Just not worth the hassle.

Bromine systems routinely show results when the iodide is added, which indicates that there is some sort of combined oxidizer.

It might be bromamines if the theory is incorrect or maybe it's bromates or maybe bromoform or maybe something else.

Combined bromine testing as free bromine only applies to bromine attached to nitrogen.

It probably does not apply to bromine attached to carbon.

There are a bunch of disinfection by-products that can build up and not all of them test as free bromine.

Testing for combined bromine can give you a sense of the water quality.

In my opinion, it is worth checking.