teapot said:
I wonder how much chlorine your system is generating throughout the day, if for example it produced 5ppm yet overnight it shows only 1ppm drop then you are actually using 4ppm/day although you are showing a drop of only 1ppm.
Total chlorine added to the pool over 24 hours is less than 1 ppm. Depending on the weather it is sometimes much less. This is with one person swimming for less than 30 minutes per day and many large trees providing lots of shade. Usage is higher when we have a pool party.
mas985 said:
Some in the industry claim that phosphate removers have cleaned up pools they maintain.
There is no question that removing phosphates will often prevent algae. That doesn't mean that removing phosphates is something that is worth doing. There are other ways of preventing algae.
Phosphate removers suffer from a number of defects and some seriously misleading marketing tactics. Under ideal conditions, removing phosphates can reduce your chlorine consumption a little and reduce the odds that you will get algae when you ignore the pool (allowing the FC level to fall to zero for a time). However, for most people most of the time, there are other approaches to achieve the same results that are significantly easier and less expensive.
The worst problem with phosphate removers is that they completely fail the "trouble free" test. For a significant percentage of users, phosphate removers cause more problems than they prevent. Anyone with significant phosphate levels in their fill water will have to spend large amounts of money on phosphate removers, then spend days, or weeks, suffering through cloudy water, only to have the phosphate level jump up again the moment they have to add more water to top off the pool. In my area, the tap water phosphate level is over 1,000. Under those conditions, getting all the phosphates out after spring opening is a large, expensive, time consuming, and frustrating project.
Removing phosphates is never required. 100% of the time it is possible to maintain an algae free pool with chlorine alone. I am not saying that chlorine alone is the ideal approach for everyone, but chlorine alone always works. Some people may need to use a higher FC level than others who are nominally in the same situation, but there is always an FC level such that you will be algae free. Swimming pools have been around for much longer than phosphate remover has been around. Before phosphate remover existed, people still had algae free pools.
Another problem with phosphate removers is the high pressure sales tactics used by some pool stores. Many pool stores insist that anyone with phosphate levels above 100 or so is doomed. People who are exposed to this constant marketing pressure often have difficulty understanding just how throughly they have been mislead. Trying to counter this pressure is where some of the more extreme anti-phosphate remover statements come from.
Another problem with phosphate removers is that it is still possible to get algae even when the phosphate level is very low. This is not common, but it does happen.
Another problem with phosphate remover is that it distracts people from what is actually important. Algae is not, in and of it's self, a health problem. Algae is a problem because it lowers the FC level very quickly. Clear, algae free, water is not always safe to swim in. It is critical for health reasons to maintain an appropriate FC level. Phosphate remover marketing tends to obscure that fact, and suggest that preventing algae is the only goal.