Ozone: how much to poison yourself

First off, we were suckered into an ozonator when we bought the pool. Too late to go back on that now because the pool was recently done and we paid.

The ozonator is the kind that sucks air into the unit, has a UV bulb that somehow (I don't know the science) generates ozone. Then a hose comes out of the ozonator, and into the drain plug of the pump. So the idea is that the pump suction will draw air through the ozonator, and therefore the ozone into the water in the pump, so you get "tiiiiny bubbles" which kill stuff in the water. I know it's not effective. I plan on getting rid of it but first want to see if it helps with scale (I read that somewhere). Anyway, onto my question...


I noticed no tiny bubbles in the pump basket, nor coming out of the pool returns, as the manual says I should see. I asked the repair guy here today about it, and he looked at it and determined that yeah, there was no airflow. So he fixed it and now we get bubbles. The hose that runs between the ozonator and the pump has this little restrictor in it that is supposed to be "set" to a particular amount of airflow so you don't get too much. I guess if there's too much air flow, you get too much ozone, and ozone is bad for people.

The question: the repair guy just sort of cut the restrictor in half so now we have suction through the ozonator. But I am concerned that he did not measure the airflow at all, he just took a utility knife and cut it and said "yep, now it sucks" and put it back together.

So is it possible that my residential ozonator system can generate *too much* ozone and introduce it into the water, and harm people?

I also had an ozone system added to my pool the same way as yours. No problems last year.

When I tried to vacuum the pool this year I had the toughest time.. turns out the ozone system was just filling the pump with air instead of letting the vacuum work (path of least resistance).

I detached the ozone system from the pump and was able to vacuum. My CC is always zero (*THANKS* Autopiliot), so I now feel the ozone system was a waste a money, and haven't reconnected it.

From what I've read the unit doesn't generate enough ozone to hurt you anyway, so I wouldn't worry about the fact that the installer didn't measure. The problem with their setup is the suction level *not* constant (vacuume, pool, spa, various valve settings) so I can't see how their design can work anyway.

Robert

I've been using ozone in the treatment of my well water for years, however I don't use it in my pool treatment. My well water is extremely bad, and prior to using ozone my testing revealed that one gallon of 12% Cl would treat 83 gallons of water. Since ozone is 100's of times more effective than Cl, it made sense to move in that direction. However since the life of ozone is so brief, I inject Cl at the pressure pump in order to maintain a disinfectant in the water system.

Why not in the pool? In my instance, the pool is covered at all times, and hence the pump run time is 4-6 hrs a day thus limiting the amount of sanitizing time. Moreover, ozone is expensive to purchase and maintain - Cl is much easier to measure and provide continuous disinfectant.

I assume that your ozone generator is a UV type that generates .5 gr/hr. My initial generator was like that but it didn't last too long, and I've since gone to corona discharge generators. I've purchased the generators from Del Ozone and the injector from Mazzei, both websites provide info on sizing, engineering and installation.

Injecting ozone in the pot drain maybe be feasible yet the air will collect in the filter. Del Ozone has the philosophy that the lesser the air flow thru the generator the better. Since ozone is an oxidizer as the air flow increases the amount of dirt particles also increases, and the ozone is oxidizing the air and not the water.

Over the years I researched water tx, in all of its forms, and alot of it is trial and error. Cl makes treating the pool very simple.

If you have excessive airflow, you do not get more ozone, you get more air and the ozone is more diluted. The bulb only produces so much and the systems are always designed so that virtually no ozone reaches the pool. It does it's work in the pump and filter. The biggest problems with excessive airflow are 1) losing prime 2) Alkalinity drop due to continuous aeration and 3) excessive bubbles in the pool.

I don't believe that UV lamp can produce enough O3 to hurt you. Ozone will dissipate pretty fast. If you run more air thru the UV lamp it produces less ozone and not enough air and you can't saturate the water enough to allow the O3 to work properly. The amount of ozone you produce will be determined by the flowrate of your pump and the amount of oxygen being introduced to the system. Ozone is great for killing organics, but expensive to maintain. Some people claim that it smells like the air after a thunderstorm. I think it smells more like very sweet watermelon. High levels will cause some people to feel sick to their stomach, headache, maybe a scratchy throat. As long as you don't take the output and breathe it straight in you should be fine. I breathed some real high levels of ozone and i'm fine. (Unless you ask my wife.) It was sickly sweet smell at those levels.

It's great for removing odors, though. That's the only reason i want an ozone generator.