Help!! Odor (like chlorine) smell that makes you cough

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Yup, that's the sort of system he is referring to. Indoor pools have a harder time with chloramines due to a lack of UV light and often poor air circulation relative to outdoor pools.

Jeff, I'm sorry nothing worked for you. The one bucket test must have been a fluke or could have still been smelly (since that wasn't tried) even with the zero CC you reported in that one test.

The approaches that have been tried for handling chloramines in indoor pools are UV, non-chlorine shock (MPS) and enzymes. The latter two work by oxidizing organics and ammonia before chlorine has a chance to combine with them but are preventative and won't usually fix a problem once it's been created (as you found out since you tried Oxy-Brite). The UV works by breaking down some chloramines. Unfortunately, since we don't know what kind of chloramine you've got that is causing you to cough, we don't know if UV will help or not. If you had a UV lamp (like a "black" lamp), you could see if that makes any difference even with a large bucket test though this time making sure you smell it since that's the key factor here. Nitrogen trichloride is very susceptible to UV, but some other chloramines are not so UV isn't necessarily a cure-all.

The main downside with a UV system, even if it were to work to get rid of what is causing you to cough, is that it also breaks down chlorine itself so you'll end up needing to add more.

Water replacement (dilution) will clearly remove whatever is in the water causing the problem, but since we don't know what caused the problem in the first place, it could happen again over time. I've been going over your posts and find the following history (just seeing if there are any clues here):

From this post, the pool is new as of Thanksgiving weekend, 2007. It's a large 60,000 gallon pool with integrated spa. Initially you were using Trichlor tabs and had CYA in the water.
From this post in May 2008, you added salt to your pool to get to around 1500 ppm. Still had CYA in the water but are using bleach.
From this post in May, 2008 you first reported sore eyes. You also are using a Stenner pump and also added Borates. Zero measured CC. You had invited kids over in the pool to aerate it. Spa was foamy. Subsequently, water was sparkly.
From this post in Jun, 2008 you reported some haze, but no CCs.
Now in Nov, 2008 you reported the smell and cough problem and also have measured significant CC.

So something seemed to happen between June and November, 2008 to have the CC increase so dramatically. In a very large pool, it would take very large amounts of organic substances or ammonia to create that amount of persistent CC (1 ppm CC is 0.2 ppm N for monochloramine which in 60,000 gallons is equivalent to 12 gallons of sweat or 1 gallon of urine). The non-chlorine shock (Oxy-Brite) will measure as CC, but it sounds like the initial pool store measurement showed CC before you used the Oxy-Brite and you've continued to measure CC long after using the non-chlorine shock. Can you think of anything that got added to the pool between June and November? Any chemicals accidentally dumped in? Any large pool parties, either with lots of (potentially urinating) children or people with lots of makeup or sunscreen (unusual for an indoor pool)?

Richard
 
First of all, thank you for your help and concern. This forum is evidence that there really are some good people left in this world.

Second, how many types of chloramines are there? Is there a test to differentiate the chloramines types?

We spent a ridiculous amount of time and money building this dream room/pool. Somehow we feel like we have been screwed over and over again. So many details, planning and implementation were left out by the "very reputable" pool builder. Never any discussion regarding chemicals management, etc., etc. Now, nothing but problems and they barely return a call.

I have looked back at the post also. I can't help thinking that my water testing might have been sloppy, incorrect, or just plain wrong (my wife thinks I am color blind). Your recounting the details is correct. I would like to add a few things that may prove beneficial for clues (time line may be slightly off, going from memory).

1. Pool finished and filled Thanksgiving weekend 2007. (open now just over a year). PB set-up did have Nature 2, trichlor puck chlorinator, a Paramount ozonator. PB admitted making some mistakes when they did the initial start up chemicals. They added CYA and a ton of shock. I didn't add chlorine for 6 weeks after the first load of pucks were gone from the chlorinator. I don't have records left from the chemical testing but the numbers were wildly off. I spent a lot of money on chemicals.

2. At the end of the 6 weeks the pool got cloudy. One day high chlorine, two days later zero chlorine and cloudy water. Over the course of the next two to three months wild swings in the chlorine. High one day, dial the chlorinator down, two days later cloudy water. Shock and dial the chlorinator up. Very little control.

3. Somewhere in here I found TFP accidentally. I was looking for information, reviews about pool cleaners. PB was pushing the Polaris 480 Pro (still haven't bought anything). Eye opening started, brain was engaged.

4. The coughing was already an issue back in March. My wife's sister came for a visit and only wanted the spa on. She was coughing back then and I thought it was because the chlorine was high. We had just come off a round of cloudy water.

5. Around May, the water balancing problems and chemical management continued. I started to "sort of" implement the BBB method (I was trying to decide between complete BBB or partial BBB with a salt generator. I am away from home a lot, have a new baby, and a wife that has little interest (and no time) to manage the pool, so I wanted to automate things. I got in a bit of trouble (or ahead of myself) by not reading the stickies and following the recipe for BBB. Removed the N2 and trichlor pucks. Decided on bleach. Added borax. Added salt for the feeling with the thought that eventually I would go all the way and do a salt generator. I would say my chlorine levels were mostly high to very high because every time the FC got down around 2 the pool got cloudy. By now, I had used cases and cases of shock and many bottles of algeacide.

6. The automation with the stenner pumps (bleach and acid) along with a CAT controller was sometime in May. It has made a huge difference. I missed used it a lot of the time because of my fear of cloudy water from the recent past. It really seemed like every other time I opened the cover it was cloudy. Also around this time the CYA was over a 100. My scale starts at a 100 and it was above that. I drained more than half the water to get the value down to 30-40. For a while with the CAT controller I still had problem but not wild problems. ORP 650 related to about FC 2. I think the June '08 "hazy" post related to this. I may have managed things in panic mode too much. In time, the ORP was dialed up as high as 800 (water was nice and clear), retrospectively water was terrible.

7. The pool builder came over for another issue around August. He initially showed interest, ran tests, took samples back to their HQ. Only thing they found was phosphates greater than 3000ppm. They treated that. My chlorine levels were on autopilot at about FC 10. Nice clear water. They used a chlorine naturalizer to bring chlorine down level to 2. They wanted to see it get cloudy, etc, etc. It came down FC 2, got a bit hazy, they never came back. The haze really didn't last and ultimately I have run the FC closer to 2 since then.

8. From Sept on the pool has been easy. The chemicals have been stable, crystal clear water. No chlorine smell in the house. The coughing seemed most evident when in spa mode forever, now seemed like we were coughing with any amount of splashing. Noticable enough that people were commenting.

In all actuality, our pool use the first half of the year was quite small. My wife had a baby last New Years eve. Usage was once a week and the weekends (no more than 6-8 people). Summer got busier, frequency but not bather load. Maybe slightly less frequent after school started. Very busy this holiday season.

As for waste products. Our baby is in 1-2 times per week. Other kids are older, 7 is the youngest and I would doubt they pea. No sunscreen, minimal make-up, normal sweat.

I really think the coughing was present last Feb/March and I attributed it to high FC (denial at the time?). I now really question my ability to determine accurate readings when you FC was so high to begin with. Not to mention that I am still using the Taylor K-2005 test kit.

Do you think I can somehow test the UV on my spa and test for coughing? How much UV would I need and how long would it take?

Sorry gotta run. Will check in later. Thanks again.
 
Thanks for the detailed info. It helps fill in some gaps. As for the different types of chloramines and more generically combined chlorines, there are a lot, but only some of them are considered to be irritating. They include the following:

Monochloramine -- this is chlorine (hypochlorous acid) plus ammonia; this is classic "poorly managed" pool smell which isn't irritating until extreme
Dichloramine -- this is monochloramine plus more chlorine; it's smelly, but not usually around in high enough quantities to be an issue
Nitrogen Trichloride -- this is dichloramine plus more chlorine; it's the most volatile, irritating, and smelliest of the three; it can also form from chlorine combined with a variety of organic compounds containing nitrogen.
Dichloromethylamine -- this is formed from chlorine plus creatinine, the latter being a breakdown product from muscle
Chloroform -- this is formed in small amounts from chlorine plus the amino acid L-Histidine
Dichloroacetonitrile -- this is formed from chlorine plus the amino acid L-Histidine
[Mono,Di,Tri,Quad]Chlorourea -- this is an intermediate of chlorine plus urea, probably short-lived
Others -- there are many other combinations of chlorine with organics, usually containing nitrogen.

There are no simple easy tests to distinguish the above. The CC test will usually detect many of these and will register in chlorine units as a function of how many chlorine are with each compound. Advanced tests for the volatile compounds are expensive, such as membrane introduction mass spectrometry (MIMS).

The initial wild fluctuations in chlorine levels and possibly pH (though you didn't mention that, but lower pH seriously increases some of the above products) may have led to some of the problems, though I'm still at a loss to where the organic precursors came from. Being a new pool, perhaps they came from byproducts in its construction. That would be more consistent with your having problems earlier on back in March.

I get an ORP reading reasonably close to 664 mV with 2 ppm FC and 40 ppm CYA using a Chemtrol controller so close to your 650 ppm. However, 800 mV ORP would be about 30 ppm FC with 40 ppm CYA and would be very high in chlorine, higher than normal shock levels, though not unheard of for indoor pools with no CYA and would be roughly equivalent to around 2.7 ppm FC with no CYA. Still, it's pretty high so could have seriously contributed to chloramine formation. Of course, this was done in May while you first saw problems in March; maybe it just made the problems worse.

As for the FC and CC measurements, using a DPD test as with the Taylor K-2005 makes the FC and CC distinction pretty useless. It's a very rough guide, but a FAS-DPD chlorine test is really what is needed to more accurately distinguish FC and CC, especially since CC is usually fairly low. This kit would supplement what you have and allow you to measure to 0.2 ppm when necessary.

I don't know enough about the UV systems to know how you could best test them. I just know that someone else had tried using a UV lamp (black light) on a bucket test and it was clear that it could clear FC readily but only some CC. Of course, the specific lamps used for pools aren't the same so it's hard to know whether they would be effective.

Unless someone else has better suggestions, you might be better off just diluting your water over time or in several chunks to reduce what is in it and sort of "start over" but be more consistent in chemical dosing going forward. In the meantime, having the cover open more with lots of air circulation will help remove the volatile chemicals that are in the pool, but will obviously be more expensive due to energy for heating.

Richard
 
There are still several things that could be tried, though none of them are especially likely to work. Still, I think it would be worth trying bucket tests with larger MPS doses, with extreme chlorine doses, and with normal shock levels of chlorine and sunlight to see if any of those will solve the problem.
 
I am sure that my "playing" Junior Chemist took care of all other options except for high dose MPS and the UV. I tried high dose Chlorine and super dose chlorine (accidentally). Also, I did add 9 pounds of MPS to "shock" the pool when initially we thought that this might help the problem. Alas, my OPR went up but the coughing remained.

I am now quite sure that this problem has been there all along. I thought the smell (which was way worse last spring and summer) and cough was related to the high FC.

I wondered if it was something from the construction process. We filled the pool half way to cure and prevent the concrete from cracking. Then they built a platform over the entire pool to construct the pool room. The pool was a gigantic toilet by the time they uncovered it 3 months later. They cleaned the surface before they did the final plaster coat. I was surprised this summer that they found such high phosphate levels (cleaning product?, we have no farms or pesticides anywhere near us).

My pH did have wild swings too. All my test results were way off. Initially, I really didn't believe that when the water was crystal clear, it could still be way out of balance and of terrible quality. (I should have been more realistic when the chlorine was off the charts to keep it clear). It wasn't until around May-June that I started to understand and begin to correct the water balance. It took 2 weeks and 20 gal of acid to get the Alk down to 100. PB left me a chart and said these are your goal numbers.....good luck.

If you were to make a guess. What do you think the probability is that the UV might be the solution? If this was your pool, what would you do? My situation is this: we cannot live with this situation. The smell is not the issue. Everyone is coughing as soon as things start getting churned up. Despite the ventilation system running, the air quality is terrible. We spent too much to fill it in (despite my wife latest feeling). We haven't really used the spa, ever. We make it hot, but no jets or blower. I don't care about trying ANYTHING else and I'm willing to spend whatever it takes to complete this dream.

Thanks again for your thoughts.

PS I will get the kit ordered. I have dragged my feet long enough.
 
I tent to believe that chlorine and UV together can take care of nearly anything, however in rare cases it takes so much chlorine and UV that they aren't really a practical solution. UV is often nice to have with an indoor pool, particularly given that you have ORP automation (which makes MPS less attractive). UV can keep CC levels under control, which is sometimes a problem with indoor pools.

The "more drastic" thing to try is to replace all of the water and check and possibly replace your filter media. Right now there is something in the water that is breaking down into CC. Replacing the water will get rid of it. You should also look at the inside of the filter and see if there is anything organic in there.

Some areas have significant levels of phosphates in the tap water. Where I live, the phosphate test on tap water shows between 1,000 and 4,000 (it varies seasonally). Phosphate is added to prevent lead, from lead pipes, from getting into the water. There is also phosphate in most metal sequestrants.
 
Jeff,

I ran into something that I've had a hard time confirming, but it said that using a chlorine neutralizer, such as sodium thiosulfate, would not only neutralize chlorine, but also chloramines as well. That makes sense for chloramines, but I don't know if it would work for the specific Combined Chlorine (CC) you have nor whether getting rid of that would get rid of the coughing. It is, however, something else to try and I wish I had thought of it earlier. Again, I'd try this out on a bucket test or isolated spa before doing anything that drastic to the pool as a whole. You'd want to dose carefully to not overdose too much since you'll be adding back chlorine again later and don't want excess chlorine neutralizer just wasting some of your added chlorine.

Richard
 
Richard, thanks once again.

I was within a day or two of posting a message. I bit the bullet and bought a UV light system. It arrived on Friday and I spent all day Sunday piping it in. I ran a baseline set of numbers. So we will see what happens. At this point a lot of prayers :). The UV people say 5-6 circulations of the pool should begin to show some changes (which should be tomorrow afternoon if my calculations are correct).

BTW, I ordered and received the new TF test kit. So I am able to post more accurate results.

Thanks again Jeff
 
Is it a low-pressure UV or a medium-pressure UV system? A low-pressure UV system only outputs primarily at two frequencies that mostly break down monochloramine, but not other chloramines. A medium-pressure UV system will also breakdown dichloramine and nitrogen trichloride. Unfortunately, a medium-pressure UV system is more likely to deplete (breakdown) chlorine faster as well. Hopefully it will break down whatever your particular combined chlorine that causes the cough happens to be.

Richard
 
I actually don't know if it is low or medium pressure. I guess I didn't know there was a difference despite all the research. The company is ultraviolet.com. Their web site includes swimming pool applications and of course they say they have very good success with issues like mine. I will keep you posted with tears or cheers.

Jeff
 

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Brief reply from my phone.

I installed 2 sanitron tubes in parallel. It handles about 80 gpm. My CC went from 1 to 0.5 in 24 hours. The only other test change was an increase in Alk from 100-110 to 130?

We did run the spa..... Initially the water acted like it was carbonated (little tiny bubbles were hitting me in the face, I thought my spa was filled with 7up). It made me cough like crazy. I walked away for a few seconds, when I came back the fizz was gone and so was the cough. So, we'll see. I will retest tonight after work. Hopefully the CC will be gone and so will the cough.

The prayers continue :)
 
Oh, the sanitrol system I have is a bit undersized. My pump puts out 120-160 gpm. Currently I handle about 80 gpm. They sent me a different UV bulb, I think he said 185nm. I didn't remember to ask why? Undersized system?? The bulb for pools applications?? Or something else??
 
Low pressure UV lamps generally output at 185 nm and 254 nm. There's a nice technical article here on the breakdown of chloramines using UV. I'm still keeping my fingers crossed. I really do wonder, however, if what you've got are really chloramines or some other form of combined chlorine. As long as the lamps work, then that will be great.
 
Ran the test last night at approx 48 hour mark. Still a trace of CC. Still a cough with initial spa start up. Definately better than it has been, but still there. I am not going to get excited either way until the CC is zero. Hoping tonight will be it.

Thanks for the support. Is this PSI, like CSI is to crime?
 
I have been visiting your thread and hope all works out with your pool!

Would you happen to have any pics so we can see it?
 
I am crossing my beach towels and hoping you can get everything figured out! Seems like a roller coaster of emotions you are going through with it. :(

I'd love to see the pool and will patiently await your pics as I know you have more important issues to deal with right now. I just hope your new UV system will help tremendously with your CC's.

Good Luck! 8)
 
I'm surprised no one mentioned air-stripping towers as a method to remove trichloramines from the water. Basically you have the water stream or spray (pumped from the overflow tank for example) in contact with forced air in a tower, the exhaust (air + chloramines) is vented to the outside. My understanding of what I read is that trichloramines are not soluble in water and this "aeration" rids the water of up to 70% of the trichloramines.
 

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