changes in water clarity

[cmarshall]

I swim in the 25 m condo pool, so I am not involved in its maintenance and know nothing about how to maintain pools.  However, the average clarity of the water has degraded over the years with periods, including recent months, of very cloudy water.  Just in the last few days I would say visibility has climbed to probably 20 m.  In early October it was down to 2 m.  I complained repeatedly to the building management who gave the usual Thai brushoff.  I don't think they did anything to improve the cleanliness of the water, but I don't know.

 

Do other swimmers in Central Bangkok have similar experiences?  Is this due to the increase in PM2.5 pollution during this period?  Are all the pools in BKK going through this?  The effect was a cloudiness, but no particular taste to the water.  When I first moved in I could count the tiles on the far end.  But now it's been months since I have seen them at all.

[daveAustin]

Most likely under-sanitized (chlorine) + lack of general pool maintenance - valeting / regular shocking. They may also not be running the pump long enough and perhaps the sand needs a change. Avoid ducking head in, or stay out altogether, if cloudy.

[cmarshall]

3 hours ago, daveAustin said:

Most likely under-sanitized (chlorine) + lack of general pool maintenance - valeting / regular shocking. They may also not be running the pump long enough and perhaps the sand needs a change. Avoid ducking head in, or stay out altogether, if cloudy.

Helpful information.  By valeting do you mean removing debris like leaves?  If so, the staff does attend to that daily.

 

How can I make this case to the building management?  Would those strips that are used to measure water quality prove the point?  

 

[daveAustin]

Yeah, vac, brush, net and of course backwashing the filter - if the latter isn't done frequently enough, like every week or so (depending on bather load), that could lead to cloudy water too. You could use the strips while they're there. If chlorine is less than about 1ppm, they need to address that. pH ideally 7.2-7.4.

[CGW]

How many hours a day do they run the filter system?

if they are cutting back on pump running time water is not being cleaned enough?

[SwimmingPoolsThailand]

Water quality does not suddenly change if it is being regularly maintained correctly.

These issues are either due to a change in pool maintenance personnel, or some equipment needs refurbishing, or the condo management is simply cutting costs (a 25m pool costs a lot to maintain).

 

Obtain an opinion from a bona fidae pool specialist.

[zappalot]

2.5 ppm or any pollution does not have an influence to the point where it would produce a milky swimming pool water. You need to know how much free chlorine is there in the swimming pool. The total chlorine measured by the here in Thailand commonly used test kit does not help at all. The cheap test kits often used do not give the important information. You also need to know the level of the cyanuric acid in the swimming pool. If they only use, as so often here in Thailand, TCCA (TriChlor Cyanuric Acid chlorine) then the concentration of cyanuric acid is rising constantly. The perfect range is between 30 and 60. A higher concentration makes it very difficult for the chlorine to do its job.

 

As others mentioned pH is important (7.2-7.6) and to get a stable pH total alkalinity (80-120) needs to be in a certain range.

 

I recommend such a test kit: 

 

 

[cmarshall]

On 1/10/2020 at 12:01 AM, zappalot said:

2.5 ppm or any pollution does not have an influence to the point where it would produce a milky swimming pool water. You need to know how much free chlorine is there in the swimming pool. The total chlorine measured by the here in Thailand commonly used test kit does not help at all. The cheap test kits often used do not give the important information. You also need to know the level of the cyanuric acid in the swimming pool. If they only use, as so often here in Thailand, TCCA (TriChlor Cyanuric Acid chlorine) then the concentration of cyanuric acid is rising constantly. The perfect range is between 30 and 60. A higher concentration makes it very difficult for the chlorine to do its job.

 

As others mentioned pH is important (7.2-7.6) and to get a stable pH total alkalinity (80-120) needs to be in a certain range.

 

I recommend such a test kit: 

 

 

Do you have a link to such a test kit on Lazada or Amazon?

[zappalot]

i bought mine with swimmingpoolsthailand.com for 159 baht

 

what helped me a little bit with our damn stupid management was the recommendation issued by the Ministry of Public health of the Kingdom of Thailand. That impressed at least a little bit. There was no excuse why not to follow their recommendations. Of course they didn't admit that they had no clue what cyanuric acid is, that they had no idea about that free chlorine is different from total chlorine or any of the science related facts. but making a show every day to these people who call themselves management eventually, after a while, made them buy another chlorine, calcium hypochlorite. Now they use both chlorine's, TCCA is lowering pH and calcium hypochlorite is bringing up pH so pH is a bit more balanced now. 

 

But be prepared for probably a long way to go to educate the clueless. I mean even the Ministry of health is not really correct by suggesting a pH range up to 8.4.. That's against what  any pool experienced expert recommends. 

Edited January 11, 2020 by zappalot