THE $1.00 PER DAY POOL THANKS TO Bleach and DIATOMACEOUS EARTH
I like my pool and want it to be clean. After reading that a lot of the swimming pool industry is just marketing and hype, I decided to try (or not try) a few things. I used to add pool shock after a hard rain, and bought the fancy chlorine tablets with algae-cide. Once in awhile, I would add some water clarifier. During long hot spells (all of summer in Florida), combined with a lot of rain (all of summer in Florida), I would get an algae bloom which I would have to clean up. After I got rid of the algae, I would add a clarifier to clump the dead algae together and filter it out so the water would be really clear again.
The easy way to test pool clarity is by turning on an underwater light at night and checking how many particles you can see in front of the light. I could always see some particles until...
I added about a cup of diatomaceous earth to the skimmer. The idea is that the DE powder fills in the gaps between the sand in a sand filter and kind of clogs it up, so smaller particles can be trapped in the filter, and then everything is backwashed out of the filter when it is cleaned out. Now if I look in front of the pool light at night, I can see nothing, it looks like the pool is filled from Evian bottles every day.
When the filter is backwashed and rinsed, all the DE that was added goes out to waste, so more can be added. It seems like DE also is able to filter out algae, since I haven't been able to find any since I started using DE. A 25 pound bag of DE costs about $20, with a use-able volume of about 10 gallons. Since I only add a cup at a time, one bag will last a long, long time.
Because of this, I have stopped using pool shock, the expensive chlorine, and water clarifier. Even better, I have stopped using chlorine tablets altogether. Now I only use 8.25% Clorox which I can buy in bulk. The advantage is that liquid bleach doesn't have any added stabilizer, (CYA) and that I can more precisely add just the PPM of chlorine that the pool needs. Since the chlorine level is always where I want - sanitizing the water and preventing algae, the filter gets used even less. Since the water is doing so well, I re-programmed the pool pump to only run 6 hours per day.
The easy way to test pool clarity is by turning on an underwater light at night and checking how many particles you can see in front of the light. I could always see some particles until...
I added about a cup of diatomaceous earth to the skimmer. The idea is that the DE powder fills in the gaps between the sand in a sand filter and kind of clogs it up, so smaller particles can be trapped in the filter, and then everything is backwashed out of the filter when it is cleaned out. Now if I look in front of the pool light at night, I can see nothing, it looks like the pool is filled from Evian bottles every day.
When the filter is backwashed and rinsed, all the DE that was added goes out to waste, so more can be added. It seems like DE also is able to filter out algae, since I haven't been able to find any since I started using DE. A 25 pound bag of DE costs about $20, with a use-able volume of about 10 gallons. Since I only add a cup at a time, one bag will last a long, long time.
Because of this, I have stopped using pool shock, the expensive chlorine, and water clarifier. Even better, I have stopped using chlorine tablets altogether. Now I only use 8.25% Clorox which I can buy in bulk. The advantage is that liquid bleach doesn't have any added stabilizer, (CYA) and that I can more precisely add just the PPM of chlorine that the pool needs. Since the chlorine level is always where I want - sanitizing the water and preventing algae, the filter gets used even less. Since the water is doing so well, I re-programmed the pool pump to only run 6 hours per day.