Swimming pool sanitation and paint are both called on far too often to cover a multitude of sins. While it might not be as devious as lining your leaking roof gutters with newspaper and spraying them black (when trying to sell your house), pool sanitation is called on to cover short comings such as,
The point is that the sanitation required in theory and the sanitation required in practice are two different things. Any sanitation system installed must take that into account. Even the most diligent of operations have things go wrong and it’s the speed at which wrongs can be fixed that’s important. Fixed, that is, before it starts to cost you serious money in chemicals, labour and power or before you lose customers.
We need a sanitation system that will keep your chlorine levels within an acceptable range but not below the required minimum level throughout your trading period. On top of this we need a dosing system that will respond to unforeseen events and any operational inefficiencies.
With a liquid chlorine pool the rate of dosing comes down to the size of the chemical pump. Years ago, I put a new chemical pump on a school pool’s liquid chlorine delivery. I pinched the sizing from an engineer’s specification for a similar pool. Immediately there was a huge improvement in ‘setpoint’ recovery. Turns out that the new pump was considerably bigger than the replaced device. You have to be lucky sometimes, don't you Fred.
The chemical controller was an Aquarius Ultima Basic model with web connection. I could see the changes in the dosing graphs. There wasn’t much change it the curve above, the chlorine demand side of the set point line, but there was a big change in the curve below, the chlorine delivery side of the set point line. The negative amplitude was almost halved. The recovery was much faster. That’s the key to good dosing. The quicker the recovery the better. Truth is, we would not have known that the pump was bigger, if it had not been for the controller and the data it gave us.
The only way you truly know what is going on with your chemical dosing is to have a chemical controller that shows you what is happening. Without the Ultima controller we would never have known the effect the bigger pump had on sanitation improvement. The pool still looked the same (when we saw it once a week) but with the higher recovery dosing there was less chance of problems developing.
It's important to have access to data but it is far more important to understand what that data is telling you. That's what we are doing constantly at FarSeight - analysing data downloaded from Ultima Controllers.
If you are considering converting your pool over to a saltwater pool and installing a commercial saltwater chlorinator then you will need to know your existing dosing data. An Aquarius Ultima can give you that information. Knowing your total consumption does not give you enough information. You need to know what your peak rate of dosing is and that’s assuming your chemical pump is big enough. That gives you a very good starting point.
If you have access to existing dosing data, this tells you what the pool needs according to the way it has been historically operated. It does not make any comment on how efficiently that pool is being operated.
Chlorinator manufacturers have their formulas for sizing chlorinators for pools. Those formulas are based on assumptions not data for an individual pool or consideration to how the pool is operated.
If you have a web connected Ultima Swimming Pool Controller, we can supply you with data analysis to help you with your decision.
