THOMPSON: The art - and cost - of keeping a pool's chemistry balanced

  OPINION It’s great having a swimming pool. It is the focus of Summer fun…for family and friends…and thank God, it’s almost over for another year. Oh, I fully appreciate our good fortune in having such a luxury just steps outside our back door. But swimming pools - like boats and recreational vehicles - are not necessarily the gift that keeps on giving. Each of these adult toys costs serious money upfront…more than I paid for my first two houses combined…and semi-serious money to operate and maintain. They have more than cost in common. You dream about being lucky enough to possess them…before falling out of love as fast and hard as you fell in love with them. The happiness of having a boat or motorhome or pool is only matched by selling that boat, motorhome or in the case of a pool...the entire home. I know all of this from brutal first-hand experience. That’s why, today, I’m writing about swimming pools…a veritable hole in the ground filled with water that has - once again - drained some of our checking account. Trying to balance the pool chemistry this Summer has, well, taken all Summer. Pools are beautiful when the water is clear and sparkling. It’s just that this year our pool has gone through various green periods…and on occasion has resembled an Environment Canada bad-water lake sample. I managed only a weak smile when the grandkids asked whether it was safe to swim in the pool in June and, again, in July. Our pool is a salt water pool…which has softer water and leaves bathing suits the same shade at the end of Summer as the beginning. However, salt water pools do have chlorine…they just make it from the salt…when things go right. Things do not always go right. In Florida - our other home - there’s no real magic to keeping a pool pristine. I lived in Naples, FL, for nearly a decade…where the temperature dipped to nine-degrees Celsius one night…out of more than 3,000 nights. So, you never empty a pool or shut it down in the Sunshine State…most are under screen enclosures that keep out leaves and debris. You empty your automatic pool cleaner once a month…often because it sucked up some sort of kid’s pool toy. Here in Vernon, the pool is covered and drained below the skimmer seven months a year…and sits. Then, every Spring, what seems like 20 kilos of organics - leaves, pine cones and an occasional critter - are fished from the bottom…a job that I’m certain resembles one of Dante’s rings of Hell. The real issue with swimming pools here is…wait for it…wildfires. More accurately, the smoke that comes from wildfires. Smoke from fires can travel hundreds of miles…so the stuff fouling our pools mostly comes from other parts of BC, the U.S. and Alberta. Smoke includes soot, char and ash…none of which does a pool any good. Soot is the very fine dregs left from incomplete combustion, char is bigger hunks of same and ash is residue comprised of mineral salts, carbonates, oxides…basically noncombustible metal compounds. All this stuff - debris once it hits your pool - has high levels of nitrogen and phosphorus…great for your garden…less so for your pool.  Ash also has alkaline pH above 9, and instantly increases your pool’s pH. When that happens, whatever chlorine you had in your pool breaks away from Cyanuric acid and ordinary sunlight degrades your pool’s chemistry further. Once that happens, you can throw small bag after small bag of chlorine shock in your pool…and it eats it up like Fido going after a dog biscuit. It takes large doses of burnout - a concentrated chlorine - to get things back to normal…and change your greenish water more clear and clean. I must say, you feel a little like a conquering hero when the pool finally comes around. All it takes…time, work and money. I have another week or so to enjoy our heated salt water pool…before we close it for the season. It is quite after today, Labour Day…the grandkids will be in school. My wife, Bonnie, and I are enjoying a Hendricks Gin and Tonic by our pool on one of the year’s final almost 30-degree days as you read this. We looked at our pool, then at each other, before speaking almost simultaneously…“I’ve been thinking, maybe we should get a motorhome!” The fun never ends. — Don Thompson, an American awaiting Canadian citizenship, lives in Vernon and in Florida. In a career that spans more than 40 years, Don has been a working journalist, a speechwriter and the CEO of an advertising and public relations firm. A passionate and compassionate man, he loves the written word as much as fine dinners with great wines. We welcome your comments and opinions on our stories but play nice. We won't censor or delete comments unless they contain off-topic statements or links, unnecessary vulgarity, false facts, spam or obviously fake profiles. If you have any concerns about what you see in comments, email the editor. mailto:news@infonews.ca