Testing your swimming pool water regularly is not only important for pool safety, but maintaining an optimum swimming environment will also prevent damage to your custom swimming pool and swimming pool equipment. To help you better understand the importance of testing your swimming pool water, we’ve put together a blog post to address some of the questions related to pool water quality, testing and maintaining a healthy swimming pool.

Swimming Pool Testing Questions

One of the questions we often hear from our customers in Bluffton, Hilton Head, Beaufort County and the surrounding areas of South Carolina relates to how often a homeowner should test the swimming pool water. Optimally, one would perform pool water testing each day. Realistically, especially in the long, hot days of summer – testing your swimming pool water two to three days a week will help ensure an optimum swim environment and a long life for your pool.

Customers also often wonder if there are “best practices” for performing tests to measure and maintain swimming pool water chemistry. Testing first thing in the morning – especially if you have been experiencing chlorine issues – is important as chlorine burns off during the day. Also, the water sample you get for testing purposes should come from 12″ – 18″ below the swimming pool surface and run your pool system for around an hour prior to obtaining that sample for more accurate readings.

Testing Your Swimming Pool Water pH

Ask most people about swimming pool water quality and they will mention chlorine. What they don’t often understand is the importance of pH when it comes to maintaining a healthy pool. Low pH will cause damage to swimming pool equipment, damage the pool liner and irritate swimmer’s eyes and mucous membranes. High pH makes swimming pool water cloudy, has a negative effect on chlorine disinfection, causes lime buildup and irritates the skin of swimmers.

What is a healthy pH level for both swimming pool water and swimmers in your custom swimming pool? If you search for testing your swimming pool water for pH, you will get a range (albeit a small range) of answers to that question. A general consensus for the optimal pH of pool water would fall around 7.4 with a healthy range of 7.2 – 7.6.

Now, of course, pH is not the only thing that determines swimming pool water quality, but you can think of it as the foundation. You will also want to test your pool’s chlorine levels, total alkalinity, calcium hardness and cyanuric acid levels as well.

Test Kits for Testing Your Swimming Pool Water

We’ve also heard from our custom swimming pool customers here in coastal South Carolina, Georgia and also Florida with questions regarding how to test swimming pool water. There are numerous swimming pool testing types available for purchase. Homeowners can choose to manually test pool water with test strips, swimming pool test kits and there is also electronic testing equipment for pools. If you choose to do so, you can also take a water sample to a swimming pool professional for testing.

Just remember, no matter how you do it, testing your swimming pool water is vital to the longevity of your pool, your swimming pool equipment and to the health of those swimming in your pool. Also, keep in mind that maintaining a saltwater pool is different than a chlorine swimming pool. We will cover that topic in another blog post.

Until then, if you have any questions about testing your swimming pool water, maintaining your custom swimming pool or any other pool-related question, do not hesitate to contact us here at New Wave Pools of SC.