Swimming Pool Water Treatment Guide - Strong Chlorine Smell

We often have people say "I can smell the chlorine in my swimming pool but the pool water is not really clean" and "As I can smell the chlorine in my pool there must be enough in the water to disinfect it but its not as clean as it should be" and so on.

The strange thing here is, if you can smell chlorine from your swimming pool then there is not enough chlorine in the pools water. Chloramines is what you are smelling. When you have insufficient levels of free available chlorine the chloramines are formed, this is because you done have enough chlorine to react with ammonia and other nitrogen containing compounds such as sweat, waste, urine and so on. As a result of this the bad compounds are only partially broken down which creates halomethanes.

If you think you may have this problem check by measuring the free available chlorine and total chlorine levels. This will give you the calculation of unwanted and irritating combined chlorine compounds as bellow:

• Combined Chlorine = Total Chlorine - Free Available Chlorine.

To remove the combined chlorine and disinfect your pools water you will need to do a shock treatment or use other swimming pool water sanitizers. This is to be done if you find that you have low or no free available chlorine along with too much combined chlorine.

The combined chlorine in the pool water can also be destroyed with a non-chlorine shock if you prefer not to use large quantities of chlorine.

Please see our buyers guide section for more information and swimming pools and other products.

Also take a look at the Pool Cleaning & Chemicals, Pool Pumps, Filters & Counter Currents and Water Care products we offer at very competitive prices.

Next water chemical article due on 09/06/2009