If you love swimming and want to have fun in your pool, it pays to check the pool's pH levels.
This will help you determine how acidic or basic your pool water is.
Maintaining the right pH levels is essential to both making your stay in your swimming pool comfortable and allowing chlorine to sanitize your pool.
Thus, you must know how to check and adjust the pH level.
The pH levels are measured on a scale from 0 to 14.
A reading of 0 indicates acidic water while 14 denotes alkaline water.
If the reading is 7, which is found at the middle of the scale, this indicates that the water is neutral.
Many factors can influence these levels of your swimming pool.
These include your pool disinfectants, the source of your pool water, air-borne debris, and evaporation.
The most desirable reading is between 7.
2 and 7.
6.
A low pH, means that the water is corrosive and may damage pool equipment or whatever it comes in contact with.
This also causes chlorine residuals to dissipate quickly, leads to eye irritation and stains the walls of your swimming pool.
A high pH, on the other hand, leads to scale buildup on your tiles, slow and insufficient chlorine activity, cloudy water, eye irritation, and may force your swimming pool filters to work harder than usual.
To test the pH levels of your swimming pool, use a pH test kit that you can easily get from a swimming pool supply center.
These kits contains chemically treated paper strips that react to the acid or alkaline levels in the water.
Just dip one end of a single strip into the pool and see what color it turns.
Check the color chart to see what this means.
A lighter color indicates alkalinity and a darker color denotes acidity.
If the color of your test strip falls outside the acceptable range, do either of the two: use a pH increaser to adjust the acidic water or add a pH decreaser if the water is alkaline.
This will prevent problems and let you enjoy swimming without worrying.