Welcome to the Forum
I think (guess) you could run the ECOsmarte with chlorine but I'd ask ECOsmarte. I love the idea of no chlorine but it doesn't look like copper alone gets the job done adequately. I personally would be worried about sharing that pool with anyone. Someone with something you don't want to catch isn't real likely to share that they have it. Maybe they are embarrassed, maybe they don't understand how it's transmitted, maybe they think the water will kill it, maybe they don't know yet they have it. That's a lot of maybes and if the copper doesn't kill it fast enough it's possible, slightly possible you could be infected.
http://www.ehagroup.com/resources/swimming-bathing-diseases/
I'm sorry we can't be more positive as your system seems to work great for keeping algae out of the pool. It's just that water that is clear isn't necessarily sanitary. If a child (or adult) had an accident in the pool it looks like copper has a 99% kill rate in 40 minutes. I wouldn't want to think about being in that pool with 40 minutes of urine.
Everyone is pretty much saying the same thing and that is you don't have anything (chlorine, bromine or Baqua) to kill bacteria. Apparently that isn't true but the copper the ECOsmarte systems uses isn't nearly as effective as the three approved chemicals and it's not approved for use in pools (commercial) for a reason, it doesn't work as well. Someone quoted how it's used in hospitals for specific sanitizing and that's the problem. In that situation it's likely the best to kill that germ in that application but that doesn't mean it's the best at killing all germs/bacteria/virus/... in a pool. I like the idea that anything coming off or out of someone in the pool is likely killed/oxidized almost immediately. That doesn't happen with copper.
ECOsmarte basics:
http://www.ecosmarte.com/man/diag/generalpool.html
Quote Originally Posted by chem geek and pulled from this ECOsmarte thread:
http://www.troublefreepool.com/threads/24826-A-New-Pool-Owner-with-EcoSmarte-it-does-work
This EcoSmarte thread has some info and additional links, while this thread on another forum (the one Jason linked to above) is about Pristine Blue and this link has some references to copper kill times. It's not easy to find definitive data on silver and copper kill times for easy-to-kill bacteria, but roughly speaking it seems to be 99% kill rates with silver at around 10-20 minutes and 99% kill rates with copper at around 40 minutes. Chlorine with an FC that is around 10% of the CYA level has a 99% kill rate at 30 seconds to a minute which should be fast enough to reasonably prevent person-to-person transmission of many pathogens.
Silver and possibly copper kill fast enough to prevent uncontrolled bacteria growth, but probably not fast enough to prevent person-to-person transmission. Bacteria double in population every 15-60 minutes so one wants a 50% kill time faster than that if one is to prevent bacteria from growing faster than they get killed. A 50% kill in 15 minutes roughly translates to a 99% kill in 100 minutes so silver beats this and copper does as well though without much margin for error.
The above is probably why commercial/public pools in the U.S. must use an EPA-approved sanitizer (chlorine, bromine or Baqua/biguanide/PHMB) since they kill quickly enough to likely prevent person-to-person transmission of most pathogens. Silver and copper can only be used as supplements, not standalone. The same is true for ozone and UV, though that has more to do with these systems not having any residual effect in the bulk pool water.
For spas, it does appear that a combination of silver ion with non-chlorine shock (potassium monopersulfate, MPS) is an effective sanitizer that appears to have been approved by the EPA. I write more about this technically in this post on another forum. It is the "low chlorine" recipe described in the Nature2 (N2) manual here though technically it is a "no chlorine" recipe most of the time.
From a practical point of view, the risk in residential pools is far lower unless you throw pool parties with people who are sick. That's probably why there aren't regulations for managing the chemistry of residential pools nor restrictions in what can be sold to the residential market. The only requirement by FIFRA (product labeling) rules the EPA enforces is that you can't claim your product is a disinfectant or sanitizer for pools and spas unless it passes DIS/TSS-12, though you can call your product a pesticide or algaecide if it is registered (silver and copper are both registered as pesticides/algaecides). For spas, metal ions alone are better than nothing, but the risk of getting hot tub itch/rash from the bacteria Pseudomonas aeruginosa (which fairly rapidly forms resistant biofilms) is possibly still high enough to be safer using an EPA-approved sanitizer (including N2+MPS). In any event, metal ions are not oxidizers so some sort of oxidizer must be added to spas in order to oxidize bather waste or else you will build up a lot of urea and ammonia (among other things).
