Pool Sanitizer Vs Shocks

Maintaining your pool is probably one of the biggest challenges after you get your pool installed. It’s important to make sure the water in your pool is safe and sanitary to use, and also to help make sure it’s in the right parameters to protect the sides and bottom of the pool, as well as your filtration system.

There are a lot of different things to deal with when it comes to maintaining a pool, and taking care of both the sanitizer and shocking your pool are necessary.

But what are the differences between pool sanitizer and shock, and when should you use them? If you aren’t sure, you’re in the right place. Here’s what you need to know about pool sanitizer vs. shocks and how to maintain your pool properly.

Pool-Sanitizer-Vs-Shocks

What is Pool Sanitizer?

Pool sanitizers serve a couple of important roles in your pool. They are an important part of regular maintenance, and it’s critical to make sure you have the right concentration of these chemicals in the water.

Too little pool sanitizer, and you can have a variety of problems in your pool water. Excessive sanitizer, on the other hand, may result in skin and eye irritation, along with other undesirable effects. An abundance of sanitizer in your pool can further trigger a host of maintenance problems, contributing to premature wear and tear.

Striking the right balance is critical, but you also don’t want to go without pool sanitizers. A sanitizer is the primary chemical in your pool working to kill harmful bacteria, prevent algae blooms, and also eliminating waterborne viruses and other pathogens that might make their way into your pool water.

Different pool sanitizers all work slightly differently, but they all accomplish the same basic things. They keep your pool safe and sanitary, and keep potential pathogens, harmful bacteria, and algae down below the required limits for safety.

Types of Pool Sanitizers

There are a few different options when it comes to using a pool sanitizer. Each of these chemicals will work, when used properly and kept at the correct concentration in your pool, but they will have a different effect on your pool and how it looks and feels to you.

Chlorine

Chlorine is the most common pool sanitizer, and can be the most cost-effective option in a lot of cases. “Chlorine Free Pools” offer an alternative approach, especially in community and private club pools. This is the chemical responsible for the pool water smell most of us remember from going swimming.

There are several different forms of chlorine, granular, liquid, and tablet. The biggest difference between these types of chlorine is how careful you need to be when handling them, and how you add the chlorine to your pool.

Liquid chlorine is generally the easiest of the three to use, and also the most affordable. However it’s also unstabilized chlorine, which means that you’ll need to add chlorine to your pool more often than if you were using one of the alternatives.

Both granular and tablet chlorine is stabilized, which can help it last longer in your pool. That does also mean that you need to be very careful to ensure you’ve calculated how much chlorine you need to add, since you probably won’t be able to adjust as easily or as quickly.

Since these forms of chlorine can help you save time and effort, they also tend to be more expensive than liquid chlorine.

Bromine

An alternative to chlorine is bromine. This is the most common alternative, though it is a little more expensive than chlorine in most areas. It’s a common choice for spas and hot tubs though, in part because bromine doesn’t feel as harsh in the water as chlorine.

Like chlorine, bromine works to keep bacteria and germs out of your pool water, and also helps prevent algal blooms at the same time.

Bromine is available in both liquid and tablets, just like chlorine, and the calculations for how much bromine to add to your pool are also similar.

There are some differences though. For one thing, bromine doesn’t smell as strongly, and also tends to make the water feel a little softer than chlorine. It’s also the better and more stable option for high temperature pools, making it the preferred sanitizer for heated pools or at least the heated portion of a pool.

Bromine is also a little easier on vinyl liners, which means you can use the same liner longer when you choose a bromine pool.

There are some downsides as well. Bromine doesn’t do as good a job at oxidizing, which can make it less effective for some of the harmful contaminants in your pool. It’s also more light sensitive than chlorine, which means that this pool sanitizer works best for indoor or otherwise shaded pools. You might need to do more frequent maintenance on outdoor pools with direct sun exposure if you choose to sanitize with bromine.

Saltwater Systems

The third option for home pools is going with a different pool chemistry entirely, and using a salt water pool. Don’t worry though, you don’t need to make your pool as salty as the ocean to get the salt water sanitation effect.

On average, salt water pools tend to be about 1/10^th as salty as the ocean. They also still use some chlorine, but they don’t need nearly as much of it.

That’s because salt water pool systems actually create chlorine using electrolysis, which means that you don’t need to store or handle as many chemicals to maintain the pool.

This option is more expensive on average, but it also means less pool maintenance, fewer harsh chemicals, and generally gives you softer more pleasant feeling pool water.

There are also other sanitizer systems, including UV light systems, but these three are the most common.

How Pool Sanitizer Works

Pool sanitizers do a couple of different things to maintain healthy pool water. Chlorine works by having several chemical reactions in the water, ultimately releasing an acid, hypochlorous acid, which can break through cell walls and kill bacteria and viruses.

Bromine works in a similar way, which makes sense since both chemicals are very similar. However, bromine uses a different acid to get the job done, and breaks down into bromamines instead of chloramines. Since it’s not as stable in sunlight, it’s important to make sure you have the right concentrations of active bromine in your pool at all times, especially after a stretch of sunny weather over an uncovered pool.

Saltwater systems are a little different again. The pool will use the salt in the water to create a lower concentration of chlorine, but otherwise uses the same effect. The salt in your pool also helps make it harder for bacteria, viruses, and algae to survive in the water in the first place, which is part of why salt water pools don’t need as much chlorine to stay sanitary.

Benefits of Using Pool Sanitizer

Here are a few of the key benefits of properly using pool sanitizer in your pool:

- Kills bacteria and algae
- Prevents the growth of mold and mildew
- Keeps pool water clear and sparkling

If you love the classic look and appearance of a well-maintained pool, properly maintaining the concentration of pool sanitizer in your pool is how you make that happen.

How to Maintain Sanitizer Levels in Your Pool

Maintaining your pool sanitizer requires a few different things. For one thing you need to make sure you have a pool test kit on hand that’s designed for the pool sanitizer you’re using. You’ll test the water in your pool for sanitizer concentrations, and the chemicals your sanitizer breaks down into, at least once a week.

From there, you will adjust as needed. With chlorine and bromine you should expect to add some of the chemicals every week, though sometimes you might not need to based on your test results.

In a salt water pool you should still test every week, but you might not need to make as many adjustments, or the adjustments you do make might be smaller.

What is Pool Shock?

One of the reasons that a lot of people get pool sanitizer and pool shock confused is because you can use the same chemicals for both jobs, at least some of the time. So, for example, in a chlorine pool, you would add a higher concentration of chlorine than normal to increase the amount of free chlorine available in the pool.

Typically you only need to shock when your pool sanitizer isn’t working as well as it should be.

It’s also an important part of the maintenance routine to help your pool recover from challenges. So if you have a large pool party, or have a storm that sends a lot of debris into your pool, or know that an animal got in your pool, even if they got back out, it might be time to use a shock.

You might need to use shock even when there aren’t clear reasons for the sanitizer to be struggling. If the sanitizer concentration accidentally dips too low for a while, even in perfect conditions, you might need a shock to help get things back on track.

Types of Pool Shock

There are two basic types of pool shock, chlorine shock and non-chlorine shock.

Chlorine shock works just the way we described above, with a high concentration of chlorine added to help the pool reach normal levels for the sanitizer.

Non-chlorine shocks like calcium hypochlorite, oxidizer, or dichloro-s-triazinetrione all work in slightly different ways, but all them also work to help boost the amount of sanitizer in your pool.

No matter what kind of shock you use, it’s critical to make sure you’re following the manufacturer’s instructions for your pool, and that you calculate how much shock you need based on both the test results from your test kit, and the size of the pool you’re using.

How Are Pool Sanitizer and Shock Different?

There are a lot of similarities between pool sanitizer and pool shock. Both serve basically the same purpose, which is keeping your pool water clean and making sure it’s safe to swim in.

However, pool sanitizer is used as part of ongoing maintenance, and the amount of sanitizer you need in your pool doesn’t really change depending on the situation.

Pool shock can help restore the amount of sanitizer you need in your pool water. It can also help correct when you already have a problem in your pool water, like when the water starts to go cloudy, or when you get an algae bloom.

When to Use Pool Sanitizer and Shock

You should use pool sanitizers regularly, and they should be part of the scheduled maintenance for your pool. Shocks, on the other hand, should only be used when you need them, either because something has gone wrong with the pool, or to prevent something going wrong when the pool water has more possible contamination than usual.

How Pool Shock Works

Pool shock works by making an immediate and significant change in the chemistry of your pool, which can help prevent problems and also works to overcome challenges when your pool sanitizer isn’t working.

It does this by significantly increasing the concentration of your sanitizer, though you do need to wait for the pool to cycle and go back to normal concentrations before using it.

Since pool shock drastically changes the environment in your pool immediately, it can also be helpful for cases where sanitizer isn’t being effective, either because of a resistance to the sanitizer or because the pool sanitizer concentration is lower than it should be.

Benefits of Using Pool Shock

Every pool needs both pool shock and sanitizer sometimes. Here are some of the core benefits of using a pool shock:

Boosts Sanitizer Levels: One of the most important benefits of using pool shock is that it can help restore the concentration of pool sanitizer back to the levels you need it.
Removes Organic Contaminants: If you know that there are a lot of organic contaminants in your pool, like after a pool party, using shock can help wash the contaminants out of the water before they can cause a problem in the pool.
Clears Cloudy Water: If you have cloudy water in your pool that can be a sign of a lot of different sorts of problems. Fortunately, all of those problems have one common solution – pool shock. Properly shocking your pool should help balance everything out and prevent cloudy water from turning into a more serious problem.
Prevents Algae Blooms: Algae is one of the most stubborn problems you can get in a pool, and preventing blooms is the name of the game when it comes to dealing with them. While many algae are harmless in water, they are unpleasant to look at or swim in. At the same time, harmless algae is often indistinguishable from poisonous varieties.

Troubleshooting Pool Sanitizer and Shock Problems

Here are some of the most common problems you can have with pool sanitizer and shock, and a quick guide on how to fix them.

Pool water is cloudy

There are a few different causes of cloudy water in a pool. It could be low runtime, which means that you need to have the filter on longer, chemical imbalances, or the beginning of an algae bloom. Identifying the source of the problem can usually be done by testing the water with your pool test kit. In most cases either restoring sanitizer levels, or doing a pool shock should clear the water within a couple of days.

Pool water is green

Green water is almost certainly either an algae bloom, a bacteria problem, or even both. It can also be caused by improper or compromised filtration systems that aren’t working the way they should.

Do not swim in green pool water. Use your test kit to see if the pH is off. You can also test for bacteria and chlorine levels to determine if the issue is more likely to be filtration, low sanitizer, or if you need to shock the pool.

Regardless of the test it’s also important to check your pool’s filtration system since problems in the filter. If your filter isn’t working properly, no amount of sanitizer or shock will do more than temporarily resolve the issue.

Pool water has a strong chlorine odor

The strong chlorine smell that most of us associate with pool water isn’t actually the chlorine. Instead it’s from chloramine, the chemicals that chlorine breaks down into as it eliminates organic contaminants in the water.

Chloramines are the result when chlorine reacts with disinfectants, sweat, makeup and other cosmetics, as well as urine, and any other organic contaminants.

Shocking your pool is usually the right response, but as always, you should test the water in your pool to make sure you don’t need to make a different adjustment instead.

Pool water is irritating to the skin and eyes

Pool water that’s irritating your skin and eyes can be a result of several different problems. It can happen if you accidentally add too much chlorine or bromine to your pool, or if you have a high concentration of chloramines or bromines in the pool.

In saltwater pools, this issue can occur due to elevated chloramine concentrations or an excess of salt. Conducting a pool test will guide your next steps, indicating whether shock treatment, different chemical additions, or partial water replacement is necessary.

Copper Ionizers For Pools Help Prevent Common Pool Problems

Another option if you’re tired of dealing with pool chemicals and frequent maintenance is to get a pool system upgrade and add a copper ionizer.

Copper ionizers excel in eradicating algae and effectively eliminate various organic contaminants. They assist in maintaining bacteria levels, reducing the need for extensive pool maintenance to ensure sanitary water conditions.

If you’re ready to make pool maintenance easier, it’s time to upgrade to a copper ionizer. Feel free to reach out to us directly for additional assistance.