Introduction: Water

Water. H2O. Dihydrogen monoxide.

Whatever you want to call it, it's everywhere and we can't live without it. We need it to drink, to water our plants which give us fresh oxygen, feed for livestock and food for ourselves, and to cool ourselves off with when it is hot outside. There are many, many other uses for water which we won't get into in this blog.

Water is also an entity that defies most reason and imagination. It dissolves substances easier than any other liquid due to the water molecule (H2O) having equal polarity, meaning that about half of the molecule is positively charged and the other half is negatively charged. This means that no matter the polarity of the substance you put into water, the molecule will be ripped apart (dissolves) by the water molecules.

Water is also self-leveling, in more ways than one. Chemically, water will always try to find a balance in itself. This means that it will either deposit or take from its surroundings to get balance.

Another way that water is self-leveling is if you put water into a container, no matter how you turn that container, the water line will be perfectly level with the earth.

With all this in mind, we will be learning how to cooperate with the water to try and get it balanced to give you the easiest time taking care of your pool so you have more time to enjoy it!

For more on water, you can check out the Wikipedia article on it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water

Basic Pool Chemistry: pH, part I

Okay, so before we go on to some of the more advanced aspects of pool care, I'm going to introduce you to the basics of pool chemistry.

This first lesson will be involving what we call pH.

pH is basically a measurement of how acidic or base the water is. pH stands for the "power" of "hydrogen". In essence, it is the measurement of the ratio of hydrogen ions (H+) to hydroxyl ions (OH-). The higher the concentrations of hydrogen ions, the more acidic the water is. The higher the concentration of hydroxyl ions, the more base the water is.

The basic pH scale is ranged from 0 (zero) to 14 where 7 is "neutral". The closer to zero, the more acidic. The closer to 14, the more base. This scale is logarithmic, meaning that each number on the scale is a factor of 10. Therefore, each number is 10 greater than the previous number or 10 times lesser than the following number. For example, a pH of 6 is 10 times more acidic than a pH of 7. In other words, a pH of 6 has 10 times more hydrogen ions than does a pH of 7. This works the same going the other way on the scale as well.

To put things in a clearer perspective, stomach acid has a pH of about 1.4 where Milk of Magnesia has a pH of about 10 and baking soda (sodium bicarbonate) has a pH of about 8.3.

The acceptable range for pH in a swimming pool is anywhere between 7.2 and 7.8 with the ideal range being 7.4 to7.6. In areas with hard water, a pH of 7.2 to 7.4 might be more ideal to prevent scale from building up on the side and surface of the pool.

We'll talk about scale in a later blog.

 - J

Welcome!

Welcome to the Pool Care by J blog!

This blog will attempt to help answer your questions about pool care. There will be everything from basic information to more advanced information, chemistry to "engineering", and more!

I have worked for pool companies for a few years now including Lee Joseph, Inc in Reno, NV and Leslie's Poolmart based in Phoenix, AZ who is the largest pool supply retailer in the world. I have done everything from servicing pools to researching the chemistry of pool water and chemicals to installing pool equipment. However, the funny thing is that I don't really care for swimming much and I don't really care about this information in my head. But, since I do know this stuff, I thought I might share it with the world.

Now for the "legal" stuff:
Any information I put on this blog is my own understanding from my personal experience and research into the various aspects of pools. Therefore Lee Joseph, Inc. and Leslie's Poolmart are neither responsible or liable for anything on this blog.

Now on to more relevant stuff!

- J