New Pool Owner Needs Advice about Ozone

[jmarcum]

Never owned a pool before. Just completed a 12,000 gallen gunite pool. I am located in Alabama. The pool has an ozone generator installed. When testing my water after the intial startup chemicals were added everything looks great except the free chlorine is low. I read an article that says ozone and free chlorine fight one another. Is that why my free chlorine is low? Should I care? When I take my water samples to have them tested will the pool supply company understand why the chlorine levels are low?

[BigDave]

I believe that ozone systems are unneccessary in outdoor pools.
You will be alot happier with your pool if you learn how to take care of it yourself. Read all you can at poolsolutions.com as well as the stickied threads in the pertinent forums here (you'll have to log out to see the rest of this site).
The single most important tool you can buy is a Taylor K-2006 test kit. The reason pool stores test your water for free is then you are almost obligated to take their advice - usually "Buy this overpriced chemical, dump alot in, come back and buy some more."
Good luck, welcome.

[PoolDoc]

As BigDave explained, ozone is pretty useless on outdoor pools. There is an extremely long current thread in the the "China Shop" section of the forum, if you really want to dig into the details.

Worse, some ozone systems can damage concrete pools like yours, by introducing a constant source of aeration, which usually ends up stripping the alkalinity and resulting in plaster erosion. So . . .

1. Turn the ozone unit off.

2. Get a local OTO / phenol red (yellow / red) drops kit.

3. Use 8% household bleach to raise chlorine to adequate (>2 ppm) levels. Adjust pH to between 7 and 8. Borax RAISES pH; muriatic acid lowers it. See http://pool9.net/borax/ & http://pool9.net/muriatic/. Learn to maintain your pool this way. This method will ALWAYS work, regardless of your pump, your other equipment, etc. You probably will NOT use this method, permanently, or at least not bleach alone. But you can ALWAYS maintain your pool this way, and that's not true of any other method. To put it another way, this will always be your 'fall-back' method of treatment.

4. As Dave said, ORDER a K2006 and learn to use it. Be sure to watch the videos. http://pool9.net/tk/ Once you have a K2006 and have tested your pool, post the results and we can move to the next level. Be WARNED: you can NOT trust pool store testing. Maybe 1 in 25 stores test accurately. They have NO reason to care about accurate testing, since inaccurate testing (as long as you don't know) sells more chemicals!

5. If you REALLY want to mess with ozone, check out the thread I mentioned.

Good luck!

( membership upgraded.)

[jmarcum]

Thanks guys. I assume you mean this thread in the China Shop http://www.poolforum.com/pf2/showthread.php/24177-ozinator-experience I've just read the original post so far. Funny thing, Blue Haven installed mine as well. From just the first post the guy seems to be happy with the performance of the ozinator just not the headaches of keeping it operating. I'll read all the replies later tonight. I originally asked for salt water but the BH guy insisted I'd be happier with ozone. So much so that he said if, within 12 months, I decide I want to swap over to salt water he will remove the ozinator and give me a full credit for it towards the salt water system. The more I read though, the less I like about salt water. If I remove the ozinator I'll just go straight old school.

[PoolDoc]

Not sure why you don't like salt.

There are problems with corrosion . . . on older pools, or if you have a non-salt compatible heater. And, there are problems with stone / deck / exposed finish damage . . . but this seems to be limited to pools in arid areas, where rain rarely rinses off decks and stone work.

However, there are only 2 real advantages to salt:

1. Some people like the 'feel' of salty water ('smoother', 'slick'). Also, increased salinity, approaching that of eye 'saline solution', reduces eye irritation. BUT you can add salt even without having a working SWCG.

2. SWCG is probably the most reliable constant feed chlorination system available to residential pool owners: it will run untended for weeks, if you don't have a leak / refill cycle going on to reduce salt levels. No other chlorine feed system -- bleach, trichlor pucks, cal hypo tabs (commercial only) approaches this level of reliability.

However, this is most valuable to pool owners who, by necessity or preference, ignore their pool for days at a time. For this reason, I usually RECOMMEND salt system (a) for pool owners who travel or are often away from their pool, (b) for pool owners who have a hard time with consistency, or (c) pools at vacation homes or other locations not continuously occupied.

For pretty much everyone else, an SWCG system is just a convenience.

[jmarcum]

I bought a cheap little 3 in 1 test kit. Not sure if this will help anything but I saw it and it was only a few bucks so I figured I'd try it until I can get the one you guys recommended. The CL and BR test show very low levels. I shocked the pool with 1.5 pounds of shock and added 2 chlorine tabs on Sunday. The pH test looks perfect. Everything I read about Ozone pools says to expect low chlorine levels though. Do you guy think this is a problem? I can post a link to a photo of the test results but the CL color tube is almost clear immediately as well as after 5 min. The pool looks great though, the water could not be clearer.