What should combined chlorine level be

They generally mean your pool chemistry is out-of-whack and needs some attention… fast. Free chlorine, combined chlorine, and total chlorine can be easily understood with the following equation:. Safe Levels of FAC: According to the American Chemistry Council , the recommended level of free chlorine should be between 2 and 4 ppm parts per million and to never let it fall below 1 ppm.

I always aim for ppm, just to be on the safe side. Some health departments in the USA set a maximum level at 0. If your pool exceeds that, the health department can get involved. Testing Tip: If your free chlorine is higher than your combined chlorine, your pool is sanitized and in good shape. Frequent testing and monitoring will keep it that way! About Us Privacy Policy. Starter Guide. Share on facebook. Share on twitter. Ozone is also a point-of-contact system, like UV, so ozone also has a limited impact on indoor air quality.

One advantage ozone has over UV, however, is that ozone will oxidize and destroy just about anything. Yes, that includes nitrogen compounds, organic bather waste, and waterborne chloramines. Ozone is also a powerful sanitizer that can kill germs and diseases. Ozone is the clear favorite for outdoor pools, mainly because a major contaminant in outdoor pools is sunscreen. UV systems have a hard time shining through a substance that is designed to block UV.

Ozone does not have such an issue. It has the ability to destroy pathogens and oxidize nitrogen compounds too. Hyper-Dissolved Oxygen HDO is a relatively recent technology in the pool industry, though it has been around for many years in other industries like food processing and agriculture. It injects hundreds of millions of nanobubbles of purified oxygen into solution; bubbles so small they can stay in solution for days. This means HDO is not just a point-of-contact system. Oxygen helps boost chlorine and enzyme activity.

So while the oxygen itself does not reduce combined chlorine, it boosts chlorine, which does. Air quality, however, is where HDO stands out. There is a noticeable improvement to indoor air quality using HDO. This is largely because there is so much oxygen in the water, that when it off-gasses, it introduces pure oxygen above the surface of the water right in the breathing zone. Fresh air dilutes chloramine gases. We know from personal experience that it dramatically improves indoor air quality Combined chlorine is a measurement of chlorine that has combined with nitrogen compounds.

We generally refer to all of these molecules as chloramines, even though chloramines are just one specific group. There are more disinfection byproducts DBPs that we can list on here. The variations happen, in part, because of incomplete oxidation. When chlorine runs out of steam after halfway destroying something, you're left with a half-destroyed, mutant byproduct. None of these byproducts are desirable, and many of them are known by the CDC to be harmful.

We are often asked how to reduce combined chlorine, that's why we wrote this article. It is irresponsible to think that indoor air quality can be "perfect" if the water quality is perfect. Even if pool operators have state-of-the-art equipment and best practices, chloramines will still be created, because swimmers use pools.

It's an essential set of chemical reactions that have to take place in order to keep water safe. Because once you understand, you will then be able to better track the levels in your pool. But there are actually three types of chlorine. They are:. When you add chlorine to your pool, it reacts with the water to form hypochlorous acid and hypochlorite ion.

These compounds together form what we call free chlorine. Once this chlorine begins to react with the contaminants in the water, such as nitrogen and ammonia, it becomes combined chlorine. Your goal is to make sure your pool is sanitized.

You want to make sure your free chlorine levels stay in check. If your total chlorine level is higher than the free chlorine level, the difference of the two are the combined chlorine levels.