If you’ve just added chlorine or shock to your pool, and your tests are showing low chlorine levels -- or no chlorine at all -- you’ve got a Chlorine Demand problem on your hands. And Chlorine Demand is a completely different issue than Chlorine Lock. Luckily, there are some simple ways to get your chlorine levels back to normal.
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⏰ Timestamps:
00:00 - Introduction to How To Cure Chlorine Lock and Chlorine Demand
00:38 - Chlorine Demand vs. Chlorine Lock
01:33 - What Is Chlorine Demand?
02:29 - How To Tell If You Have A Chlorine Demand Problem
02:52 - How To Cure Chlorine Demand
03:14 - How To Prevent Chlorine Demand
📡 Subscribe to our channel if you want more information on swimming pool and hot tub maintenance: https://www.youtube.com/swimuniversity
Swim University has made swimming pool and hot tub care easy for more than 10 million homeowners. And each year, we continue to help more people with water chemistry, cleaning, and troubleshooting. We know taking care of a swimming pool or spa can be difficult. And it’s hard to find a trusted source of information. We get it! This is the reason we created Swim University.
😎 Visit our website for more in-depth information on swimming pool maintenance: https://www.swimuniversity.com/
💦 Download our pool maintenance video course and save money with the promo code VIDEO: https://www.swimuniversity.com/pool-care-handbook/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=video&utm_campaign=youtube_description'>https://www.swimuniversity.com/pool-care-handbook/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=video&utm_campaign=youtube_description
🏊♂️ Our Favorite Pool Maintenance Gear: https://www.swimuniversity.com/pool-maintenance/'>https://www.swimuniversity.com/pool-maintenance/
⏰ Timestamps:
00:00 - Introduction to How To Cure Chlorine Lock and Chlorine Demand
00:38 - Chlorine Demand vs. Chlorine Lock
01:33 - What Is Chlorine Demand?
02:29 - How To Tell If You Have A Chlorine Demand Problem
02:52 - How To Cure Chlorine Demand
03:14 - How To Prevent Chlorine Demand
📡 Subscribe to our channel if you want more information on swimming pool and hot tub maintenance: https://www.youtube.com/swimuniversity
Swim University has made swimming pool and hot tub care easy for more than 10 million homeowners. And each year, we continue to help more people with water chemistry, cleaning, and troubleshooting. We know taking care of a swimming pool or spa can be difficult. And it’s hard to find a trusted source of information. We get it! This is the reason we created Swim University.
😎 Visit our website for more in-depth information on swimming pool maintenance: https://www.swimuniversity.com/
If you've, just added chlorine or shock to your pool and your tests are showing low chlorine levels or no chlorine at all, you've got a chlorine demand problem on your hands and chlorine demand is a completely different issue than chlorine lock. Luckily, there are some simple ways to get your chlorine back to normal check it out before we dive in, if you're looking for help keeping your pool clean and clear check out our free pool care cheat sheet at swimuniversity.com, it's a totally free easy to use guide To help you keep track of taking care of your pool first, what is chlorine demand versus chlorine? Lock? These terms are sometimes used interchangeably, but they're very different. In fact, chlorine lock isn't even a real problem. Some pool companies and experts claim that if you have too much cyanaric acid aka chlorine stabilizer in your water, your chlorine won't function.
Well. The theory goes that when this happens, the chlorine's chemical reaction gets locked by the stabilizer and it can't sanitize. Well, the opposite is actually true: cyanuric acid actually helps chlorine to do its job, cya stabilizes, the chlorine in your water and prevents it from breaking down as quickly. Of course, it is possible to have your cya be too high, so be sure to test your levels regularly, but high cya does not cause your chlorine to become useless or locked up.
What's actually occurring is a lack of chlorine and that's called chlorine demand. So what is chlorine demand and what causes it? Chlorine demand means that the chlorine in your water is being consumed faster than it can be added to your water. When you add chlorine to your water, it only stays effective for so long. If you have lots of debris or contaminants or a lot of swimmers in your pool, you'll need more chlorine to properly sanitize your water.
In other words, when there's more to sanitize in your pool, the chlorine demand is higher and, if you don't add more chlorine to compensate your chlorine will become less and less effective. Chlorine demand can also happen in the spring when you first open your pool or if your pool hasn't been properly cared for in a while during the winter or when your water sits stagnant. Your pool can accumulate organic contaminants and this takes extra chlorine to neutralize the other. Culprit is heavy rainfall.
If you have trouble maintaining your chlorine reading after a rainstorm chances are that you have a chlorine demand problem. So how do you know if you have chlorine demand? Well, first, you want to test your water, then begin by adding chlorine to your pool once you give it enough time to circulate retest your water's chlorine level. If you get a very low reading or no chlorine reading at all, this is a case of chlorine demand. You can also bring a sample of your water into a local pool supply store to get a chlorine demand test.
So here's how to cure chlorine demand because chlorine demand means the chlorine in your water is being consumed faster than it can be. Added you'll need to super chlorinate, your water and the best way to do that is by shocking your pool. Now, before you shock your pool, you want to make sure that you test and adjust your alkalinity and ph levels. Then you'll want to add a triple dose of calcium hypochlorite shock, aka cal hyposhock to triple shock your pool. Add 3 pounds of shock per 10, 000 gallons of water before adding the shock, make sure that your cya or stabilizer level is between 30 parts per million and 80 parts per million with 50 parts per million being ideal, also remember to shock at night, because sunlight Can break down your chlorine, keep your filter system running to distribute the shock and then retest your water after it circulates overnight or after eight hours during demand is easy to prevent. If you keep a simple weekly maintenance schedule test and balance your water brush and vacuum debris from your pool and then add chlorine sanitizer whenever your levels start to drop, it's also a good idea to shock your pool once a week to keep contaminants at bay and, If you tend to get a lot of leaves and dirt in your pool, be sure to use a pool cover now, if you want more help with pool care, go grab our free pool care cheat sheet at swimuniversity.com cheat sheet, and if you found this video helpful Leave a comment hit the like button and subscribe for more pool maintenance tutorials throughout the season. That's it thanks again and happy swimming.
Chlorine lock isn’t a real thing? So what’s happening, or what’s it called, when you have very high CYA and chlorine levels and still have a green pool? Seems very real to me, adding more chlorine or shock does nothing to clear green water, only makes chlorine levels higher.
Can’t get your cheat sheet. Gave my email address but never received it.
I have a chlorine demand problem with a 622 phosphate level but no visible algae. I have a salt generator and a UV system. I’m running my salt system at 70% and is producing chlorine at the generator.
Stabilizer is 44 & pH is 7.3
Should I just shock the pool or should I also add a phos free product? My pool is plaster and only 2 months old. Thanks!
Thats a new twist so no what do I do. Hmmm.
Thank you so much for the useful videos! I am having a salt water pool at the rooftop of my building. The Cl level is always between 06. to 1.0 even after I have already added some chlorine. So, is it counted as chlorine demand problem?
Just dumped 10 bags of shock in my pool according to this advice and it did literally nothing. Still no free chlorine on the test strips. Thanks for wasting $100 of my money
Idk man I feel like you shouldn’t sugar coat the effect of high cya on chlorine. It’s a bigger problem than people realize
I put 2lba of shock . Let it sit over night. And it's all clear but cloudy. I put some ph in it. And a bottle of I bought XtraBlue Algaecide 40 oz. Algae Prevention and Algaecide and Xtra shock. I put it in the morning and I let it sit for 2 hours and then the ph Are you in Orleans ?
Awesome video! Came at the perfect time for me! You rock.
Quick question though. My look was Chrystal clear despite not being able get get chlorine up. PH and Alk were good.
Triple shocked last night and now my pool is super cloudy right before the weekend! Help!!
We where adding tons of chlorine. Not until we tested and found high phosphate levels (we live near a bunch of farms) and took care of that issues no amount of shocking and additional chlorine could get our chlorine level to increase.
I had this last year. Nightmare. I had three companies all tell me different things. I researched YouTube. My ONLY fix was to balance my ALK and PH to perfection, then BINGO, it unlocked. Very weird and frustrating
First time pool owner, I am having to add 6 gallons of muriatic acid to my water (per the pool stores test). How much can I safely add at a time, and how long do I need to wait between adding the next round of acid. Thanks for the help! Your videos have been a life saver!!!
This happened to us last year. Nothing we tried worked and we didnt have any debris in the pool. It happened after a july 4th picnic where the pool was loaded with swimmers all day. Ill save you guys money. Dont dump endless chemicals. It doesnt normally work. Easiesy thing to do and what we ended up doing is drain about a foot of water out and add new. That simple. Chemicals normally dont fix this issue. Do research
What do you recommend for hi copper
Always make sure total chlorine n free chlorine are even or your swimming in chloramines
Can you do a video on how soft water affect pool chemicals please!!
Love this information,you guys are so helpful. Service area Nepean??
Thanks. Just discovered the same issue. We’d put chlorine in and in a few hours, it would be gone. Are you in Ottawa ?
My test strip shows high total chlorine and super low free chlorine. I know I need to vacuum it out still but I can't see the bottom and it's murky blue. Is floc my next move? Service area Kanata??
Been watching you a while but lost me on this one. Had a green water outbreak a few weeks ago. Shocked the pool at a 11ppm. It did nothing for two days. Check my cyanuric levels and they were through the roof. Did 50% water change(10000 gal pool) and dosed the chlorine back up to 11ppm and it cleared that day. If it wasn’t my acid levels locking out the chlorine, what was is? Service area Barrhaven??
Thank you guys
Hello! Thank you and love you videos and your course (which I just started)!
How do I get my CYA down? It is 122. I just realized our shock has CYA in it, but we only shock once a week. Also chlorine levels are low, so I am working on that.
Or you added so much chlorine that your test kit can read and shows that there is no chlorine because it’s off the chart
LOVE your videos – they are incredibly helpful!
You literally just gave me the answer to all problems I’ve been running into! Thank you!!!
I have the opposite problem. My chlorine level isn’t going down this year even with my salt system turned off. Makes no sense to me. It used to deplete quickly on hot summer days and I’d have to crank the salt cell percentage way up.
As Mike L said, this is happening to me right now and this video couldn’t come at a better time, thank you so much. The pool is getting a shocking tonight lol 😂
oh man thank you so much for this video and it couldn't have come at a better time…i'm having this EXACT issue right now and its getting frustrating. It all adds up though all of the reasons you said. Really appreciate you sir keep up the good work very glad I subscribed to your email list.
Yeah i had a pool a few years ago with insane chlorine demand……so much debris and vegetation around the pool, it was a money pit.
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