With help from an article by Buzz Robinson of Pool & Spa Outdoor
I’ve been in the pool and hot tub industry for 25 years so I have a pretty good grasp of
the lingo. However, if I put myself in the shoes of a new pool owner, I can instantly feel
your pain. I can hear you asking what I asked years ago. “What in the world is an oxidizer
and how does it differ from a sanitizer? And what’s up with shocking the water? I know
for a fact that electricity and water don’t go together!” Of course, you are right and these
terms – while sounding scientific – are easy to grasp. Below is a short list of swimming
pool terms you should familiarize yourself with and that you will likely run into as a
current or future swimming pool or hot tub owner.
Circulation – refers to the amount of time your pump and filter are turned-on. The industry standard to ensure the filter does its job and chemicals are well distributed s is for every gallon of water to run through your pump and filter at least once a day. The math to figure that out requires you to know how many gallons per minute your pump runs. Your dealer should be able to help you. Let’s say it’s 40gpm and you have a 20,000 gallon pool. Divide 40 into 20,000 you get 500 minutes required daily divided by 60 minutes in an hour gives you 8 hours.
Skimmer – is located at the top edge of the pool and has a bobbing plastic door, called a weir or weir door that traps any floating debris in the skimmer. The debris is captured in the skimmer basket, located underneath the skimmer deck lid. The skimmer is where water is sucked into the pump to begin the circulation process and is also where a vacuum hose or automatic pool cleaner hose can be connected to clean the bottom of the pool.
Main drains – are only found on the pool floor of in ground pools. Main drains don’t function like bathtub drains; they simply provide water to the pump from the bottom of the pool.
Suction vs. Pressure Side – The main drain, skimmer and wall vacuum fitting are suction lines, as they are located on the suction side of the pump, which sucks water from the pool and carries it to the pump. The pressure side or return side pertains to all of the water sent back to the pool after the water has passed through the pump, the filter and any other equipment.
Filters – are the piece of equipment directly after the pump that catches fine debris, such as sand and organic material. There are three types of pool filters. In order of easiest to keep clean, there is the sand filters where water enters through the top of the filter, trickles down through the sand and flows back to the pool, cartridge filters that use a pleated replaceable cartridge to filter the water and DE (diatomaceous earth). For the level of micron filtration best to least you would reverse the order with DE being the best.
Backwashing – this is the process of cleaning a sand or DE filter by basically reversing the flow of water back through the filter to dislodge whatever was trapped there and flush it out of the pool through a separate hose. You backwash when the pressure on the filter gauge reads 10 pounds over norm operating pressure.
Water balance – is the process of maintaining a proper pH, total alkalinity and total hardness. pH (potential of hydrogen) is a measure of acidity or alkalinity. For pools and hot tubs you should maintain 7.2 to 7.8. Total alkalinity is the amount of alkali materials in the water necessary to maintain a stable and balanced pH. The proper range is 80 to 120 ppm. If either of these are off the water can be scaling if too low or corrosive if too high. Total hardness is the amount of dissolved calcium and magnesium in the pool water. Its proper range is 200 – 400 ppm. To learn more about the three most important factors to maintaining proper water balance in your swimming pool and factors that affect your pools water balance, check out “Understanding Pool Water Chemistry” in our online pool school.
Stabilizer – Often-called conditioner, stabilizers are necessary to protect chlorine from the UV rays of the sun. It should range from 25 – 50 ppm and be added to a pool once or twice per year. Some types of chlorine such as Trichlor have small amounts of stabilizer in the tablets.
Sanitizer – this is whatever is killing bacteria in the water. Typically, chlorine does this job, however minerals like FROG® are also registered as sanitizers with the EPA under the category disinfectants.
Oxidizer – Oxidizers too can kill bacteria, however they are mainly used to break up organic material such as body oils, suntan lotions and other debris that sanitizers have no effect on. Chlorine in high amounts can act as an oxidizer when shocking the pool. Non-chlorine shocks also oxidize contaminants.
Chloramine – also called combined chlorine is chlorine that has already been used up or combined with bacteria so it is no longer effective. Chloramines create the heavy chlorine smell and irritate the eyes, nose and throat. Shocking the pool is necessary to breakup chloramines and returns your pool water to its soft clear self.
Algaecide – does one thing – kills algae. Algaecide comes in two forms – copper based, which is typically the most effective as copper is toxic to algae and a polyquat formula. Many pool owners use a preventative dose of algaecide like FROG® BAM to ensure algae does not occur.
Clarifier – Swimming pool clarifiers help clear turbid (cloudy, murky opaque) water quickly by drawing all of the particles together so the filter can remove them from the pool. Shocking your pool water will have the same effect.
Learn more about how your swimming pool works. For a full glossary of pool terms, and to learn more about pool water care and what are important factors to measure in your swimming pool, visit our Water Care 101 Pool School, or for those of you who are hot tub owners, check out our Spa School.
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