Chlorine serves a vital purpose in keeping swimming pool water clean and healthy. In theory, if you have a cloudy swimming pool, you can add chlorine to “shock it” and clear things up. Chlorine will get the job done.
Administer Shock and Algaecide Weekly
Even if you maintain proper chlorine and pH levels in your pool, the water may need a little boost to keep it clear and sparkling. Once a week, you should shock or super-chlorinate your pool to kill any lingering bacteria or algae that may be growing.
Chlorine. Chlorine is by far the most commonly used swimming pool sanitization agent. The goal of adding chlorine to a pool is simple: kill microorganisms such as bacteria and algae. A pool with excessive bacteria and algae is cloudy and unsafe to swim in.
Baking Soda
Most remedies call for adding additional chlorine into the water. If your water's pH balance is between 7.2 and 7.5, however, you can add baking soda to the water to help clear it up. This serves as a replacement for chlorine because baking soda is a natural cleaning agent.
Baking soda can work wonders in a pool. Baking soda can: Help to clear cloudy water and restore the sparkle. Spot-treat algae.
Some of the best natural homemade pool clarifiers include baking soda solution, bleach, white vinegar, lemon juice, rubbing alcohol and borax. Compared to commercial chemical clarifiers natural ones have enzymes that break down the dirt in the water making it easy and cheap to filter them out.
Excessive levels of pool chemicals can cause your water to become cloudy. High pH, high alkalinity, high chlorine or other sanitisers, and high calcium hardness are all common culprits.
Phosphate removers can also cause cloudy or hazy water as they bind to phosphates and cause them to fall out of solution and precipitate for removal by filtration.
A pool turns green when there is algae in the water. There are several reasons why algae could grow, but it is most commonly caused by prolonged exposure to the sun, rain and temperature spikes. These factors affect the chemical balance of the pool and result in the pool turning cloudy and/or green.
You can dilute the baking soda in a bucket of water or just broadcast it over the entire surface of your swimming pool. It should take about 24 hours before your swimming pool completely clears.
What can you use instead? Bromine — considered a safe substitute for chlorine. Looks for BCDMH tablets, which are typically 66% bromine and 27% chlorine. If unable to find, you can use just bromine but it may leave the water a dull green color.
Wait at least six hours. Let the baking soda dissolve into the water. Turn on your pool's circulation system to help it disperse.
Add 25ml of Sparkle per 1000 litres of water and pour directly into the swimming pool. Do not add more than 1 Lt in any application for swimming pools up to 50,000 lt capacity. For larger swimming pools dose accordingly.
In a nutshell, pool clarifiers are “mild” versions of flocculants. They're great for mildly cloudy pool or if you have a silt problem that your filters just can't catch. What they do is they bind to these tiny particles to increase their size, allowing your pool filter to catch them.
Chlorine issues often cause cloudy water. Adding a recommended dose of pool shock to your pool can clear it right up. Poor circulation or filtration can contribute to cloudy water. Make sure your pump and filter are working properly.
Imbalanced alkalinity and pH also could result in cloudy water, and it can be a safety hazard. The total alkalinity of the pool should remain between 8 to 120 ppm and the pH needs to be monitored.
It's available in liquid or tablet form and helps particles clump together so your filter can remove them effectively. It may take a couple of days for the debris to disappear completely, so make sure your pump runs for at least 24 hours for the best results. If you have very cloudy water, use pool flocculant.
For the most part, yes. It can be unattractive and it should be addressed, but it is mostly safe to swim in cloudy water. The only exception would be if the pool is cloudy because there are too many chemicals in it. This pool water would be unsafe to swim in and should be avoided.
It's not a good idea to use pool shock at the same time as clarifier. Some clarifiers are polymer based and the shock can act to break up the polymer causing the clarifier to be ineffective. It's best to shock your pool before and wait a day or two before adding clarifier.