Pool chemicals for dummies. Now that’s my kind of guide! If you’re a little confused on what all these things are and you just want water that feels nice as well as looks nice, here’s your guide. Because Aqua-Tests for 14 different components, sometimes it’s hard to keep up with what everything is, what it does and what products you need to use for it. Here are the things we test for, why we test for them and what they do.
Saturation Index
Saturation index is a way to evaluate your water quality and to determine if your pool or spa needs certain chemicals to keep your water looking and feelings great.
TDS (total dissolved solids)
Total dissolved solids is the measurements of the combined content of inorganic and organic substances in your water.
CYA (cyanotic acid)
Also known as stabilizer! What a great thing stabilizer is. Stabilizer is the sunscreen for you pool. The blazing hot sun is going to soak up every little bit of chlorine it can get its hands on. That’s when our stabilizer comes in. After you put your stabilizer in your pool, it becomes sunscreen for you pool so that less, if at all any chlorine gets soaked up by the sun and instead stays in the pool and does what its job is.
Chlorine
Every single time that pool or spa is used, we are bringing in bacteria. The chlorine’s job is to kill that bacteria, and gas it. When you smack a mosquito on your hand, you have to dispose of it. When you kill the bacteria in your pool, just like a mosquito, you have to dispose of the waste.
pH
pH is one of the three main components on your waters saturation index (the two others being alkalinity and calcium hardness). pH is the main thing that fluctuates in your water. It is affected by every little thing that comes in your water.
Alkalinity
Alkalinity is essentially the boss of pH. If your alkalinity is in range, there is more likely of a chance that your ph will ‘get jealous’ and want to stay in range as well.
Calcium Hardness
The amount of calcium that is in your water is important. If your calcium is too hard, it can cause scaling and staining. Though there isn’t really a way to control calcium it really depends where your water is sourced from and if your water is hard, for you to use a stain and scale to help staining and scaling.
Borates
Borates is the feeling of that water. If you don’t have a salt water pool but love the feeling of it, we have a few products that you can put into your pool to get that beautiful silky smooth feeling while swimming.
Copper, iron and manganese
These are all the metals we test for and our fingers are crossed there aren’t any in your pool!
