This is Janine Wilson with pool zones. And today we are going to go into an introduction about balancing, and starting up, and adding chemicals to swimming pools.

I am a certified pool building professional. I have credentials from Watershape University for construction and for fluid dynamics. I’d like to start with a story about my background, and why I became so much more interested in chemistry. 

So, when we finished a swimming pool, and that meant the pebble was completed, the pool was started, and obviously the homeowner was very pleased with the outcome initially, what happened, consequently, was that the interior of the pool would deteriorate very rapidly.

And, when I say that, what I mean is that the beautiful interior that the homeowner actually saw the first day or two would just gradually deteriorate, changed, stain, get mossling, which is a very variated look, may look great in plants when you have yellow and green leaves, but when you get that variegated look in a pool, it’s not appealing whatsoever. 

And so the pool startup guys; they would come in and each one would have an opinion and each one would have a completely different opinion. And so we ended up with all sorts of anomalies that would occur to the plaster product. So I decided that I needed to educate myself and learn the principles.

So, the purpose of today’s discussion is to introduce you to the principles and to that 20 years of learning and education that I’ve had in the industry, in now simplifying all those complexities that I’ve had into some very basic ideas and extremely basic principles.

So let’s get started now, in terms of looking at what does it take to balance a pool in the area of chemistry and keep in mind chemistry can be a very complicated subject, but it also can be very simple. 

Now, what I discovered was that there was… there is a particular sequence in which one depends on the other, depends on the other, depends on the others. So in other words, let me give you an extreme example of what people do, what they shouldn’t do, is they have a green pool, and they rush out there and they throw Shock in the water. Shock is granular chlorine, so let’s just call it chlorine.

They did not solve the problem. Why? Because chlorine is the last – one of the last areas to balance and chlorine depends on all of these predecessors to be balanced before chlorine can actually become effective. 

So let’s go through the sequence to look at it. So number one is alkalinity. Now alkalinity you can see these two black arrows on one side and then you see these alternating arrows on the other side. And the reason for that is that alkalinity and pH are both going to move based on the same chemical added to the water.

And I know that your next question is ‘well which chemical?’ we’re coming to that but let me just go through this, in sequence of balancing one at a time, the next is balanced or has a buffer and is much much easier to balance. 

So starting with alkalinity, chemical is added which also affects pH so the to move in unison to some degree. They are out of unison to some degree as well. 

Number two is actually hardness. So once we get the alkalinity where it should be, we check the hardness and sometimes with a new pool, we need to add hardness. If it’s an old pool, hardness might not be an issue, if it’s a pool that was just recently filled, that’s an area that has to be balanced before proceeding to step number four. 

Remember, steps one and two are affected by the same chemical so they will move. Step number two, affected by different chemical. Now once we start seeing one and two, coming to the balanced ranges, then we go into number four. This is called a Conditioner or the chemical name is Cyanuric acid. 

Now before now we’re assuming at this point we’ve balanced one, two, and three. And now we’re on to number four, following the balance of number four, we can then start to add chlorine, because that’s when chlorine will become extremely effective. 

Now before now we’re assuming at this point we’ve balanced one, two, and three. And now we’re on to number four, following the balance of number four, we can then start to add chlorine, because that’s when chlorine will become extremely effective. 

And that’s because that’s how people think, you know, do you want it to go up or down, and then you buy the chemical that, you know, complies with that. On the left hand side, we see Nuriatic acid, it does exactly the same thing.

Again, what we want to do is we want to typically, typically with a new pool, with an existing pool, typically we want to bring the alkalinity down, that’s where we start, we want the pH to come down, I hope I’m making it very clear that that is generally 90% of the time, that’s the direction that the numbers need to go down. 

Again, what we want to do is we want to typically, typically with a new pool, with an existing pool, typically we want to bring the alkalinity down, that’s where we start, we want the pH to come down, I hope I’m making it very clear that that is generally 90% of the time, that’s the direction that the numbers need to go down. 

This is calcium, this is pretty much Epson salts, that’s what this is. So if you want Epson salts, that is probably the cheapest way to buy it. Now, this will balance number two, so it’s again, it’s a granular product. And it’s very easy to add very simple to mix.

So let’s say that we now know and we’ve learned the products that we need for alkalinity, for hardness, and for pH, we don’t know the numbers yet. We don’t know what are the ranges, we will come to that, it is really not important at this point.

The important aspect right now is to recognize that you must work in that sequence always. Whether it’s a green pool, whether it’s a new pool, whether it’s an old pool, it doesn’t matter. It’s a principle, a very, very important principle and if you always follow the sequence, you will manage to balance the chemistry. 

Now this is jumping ahead a little bit here. So I’m going to leave this item off record at the moment we’ll come back to that in a subsequent video. This is just a product for such remarkable clarity. It is very easy to add, but it’s not part of our five. So let’s go into our number four. 

Number four is conditioner. Conditioner comes either it comes in a granule form. Yeah, which you know, I mean, I don’t mind sometimes mixing the granular form, but this is just so simple. It really looks like milk when it comes out of that bottle. This is called Conditioner. It’s also known as cyanuric acid. It’s not to be confused with the initial acid we talked about the dry acid.

Now. So again, if we go back to our chart, that’s number four. Number five will be chlorine. And chlorine will be the very last chemical, and the very last test that we will actually want to balance and it’s quite okay and very much okay, that you don’t have chlorine in the water until you balance the rest of the tests.

These are three inch chlorinating tablets, they go into a dispenser which is located at the pool equipment. We will not delve into that today. But I just want to let you know that that’s typically where they go. And sometimes they can go in the skimmer but there’s a huge caveat about that, too. It’s an extreme no, no, don’t put the in the skimmer. But there are exceptions to that rule if you identify the reasons why you shouldn’t do it, and then you can determine how you can do it.

Now, this again, is a little more complex. I do want to discuss this product at some point. It’s an absolutely phenomenal product. It will help ungreen a green pool if I can use that term, but it’s not part of our five. 

So we’re going to now delve into clarity of a pool. How do we make it clear? How do we get the sparkle to it? What will affect it? And how will these chemicals affect this 11 and a half 1000 gallons of water?

So that’s going to be coming up in our next video as we delve into chemistry and just keeping it extremely simple.

This is Janine with pool zones. Please join me in the next video.