Is Phos Free BAD for your pool?

[Rossko]

I've seen this broached in some other posts and it seems the consensus here is that you don't even need to know your phosphate levels if you keep the water balanced and the FC level's where they should be.

But my question is: Is adding a phosphate lowering treatment like Phos Free a BAD thing to do in your opinion or is it only a waste of money?

Just thinking about vacations or periods of laziness if the chlorine does run too low is it a bad thing to not have any plant food in the water? We have our lawn treated and I have crazy high phosphate levels unless I use Phos Free. I've never really lowered it to 0 but if I don't treat the water I run over 1000.

 

[JasonLion]

Mostly, it is a waste of money. But for some people it causes persistent clouding of the water that is very annoying and probably qualifies as "bad", depending on your definition

There is absolutely nothing wrong with having phosphates above 1000. Just about any phosphate level from 200 to 20,000 will behave just about the same, so there is no point in worrying about staying under 1000.

Now if your phosphate level was naturally around 200, there might be some point in lowering it, as doing so would be fairly easy. But if as you say you have "crazy high phosphate levels" there is no point in trying to lower it as it will be very expensive and lots of work and you probably won't ever get it low enough to make any difference at all.

 

[bobodaclown]

Depends on what you mean by bad. If you mean a waste of money, then it's bad. Kill the algae and you don't have to worry about phosphates (food for algae).
Chlorine is the most cost effective way to maintain a pool.