Over the course of the time you spend using your swimming pool, contaminates will inevitably find their way into the water – not least the sweat, saliva, skin cells, and urine that humans introduce. That’s before one considers sources of contamination from the broader environment, such as dirt, leaves, and bugs. 

This underscores the importance of “shocking” a swimming pool. This is the process of adding a high concentration of chemicals to the water to drive up the chlorine level, as a way of destroying contaminants. 

Chlorine Shock granules, such as those in our range here at Pool Warehouse, are routinely used for this purpose. The goal when using these products is to raise the levels of free chlorine in the pool to about 10 parts per million (ppm) or more, although it is crucial to ensure these levels have dropped to below 3ppm before resuming use of the pool. 

Why is it so critically important to ‘shock’ a swimming pool? 

As you may have already seen in our own extensive online range of swimming pool chemicals, there are other sanitisers that are customarily used in pools on a day-to-day basis. So, you might wonder why – if you’re making use of such products in your pool – you would need to use shock treatments as well. 

The short answer to this question is that you can’t depend on those everyday sanitisers, on their own, to keep the chemicals in your pool water at the right levels. Those sanitisers aren’t sufficiently concentrated to break down waste products, or to tackle especially problematic cases of algae growth in your pool. 

So, whatever else you do to manage the chemicals in your pool water to help ensure the cleanliness and safety of the water for swimming, you will need to use shock treatments relatively frequently, too. This will be especially important during times when you are using your pool a lot, as well as at both ends of the swimming season. 

The vital difference between free chlorine and total chlorine 

There are two forms of chlorine that swimming pool owners need to be aware of. One of these is “free chlorine”, which is the level of chlorine that is typically measured. It refers to the amount of chlorine that is effectively available in the pool to kill off bacteria and other pollutants. 

“Total chlorine”, meanwhile, includes not only free chlorine, but also the chlorine in the pool that has combined with contaminates in order to destroy them. 

The level of total chlorine in your swimming pool, then, will always be equal to or higher than the free chlorine level. When you test your swimming pool water, the ideal result would be the same number being recorded for free chlorine levels and total chlorine levels, given that this would indicate there are no contaminants in the pool. Such readings would indicate that all the chlorine in your pool is “free” – in other words, available and ready to do its job. 

Don’t underestimate how crucial a role pool shock treatments play 

By applying shock treatment to your pool, you can drastically heighten the level of free chlorine, which can then get to work on killing unwanted bacteria. 

The outcome, once the chlorine levels have subsequently dropped, will be a safer and healthier pool for you and your family to swim in again. So, when it comes to swimming pool chemicals, shock chlorine is definitely a product you will need to understand and make good use of. 

Browse our online store at Pool Warehouse today, and you can soon be doing exactly that, as part of the proactive and responsible use and maintenance of your swimming pool.