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Abris and chemicals


Jacks
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The answer to your question depends a lot on what type of sanitisation system you are running and where you are (climate).

If you are running automatic chlorination there is nothing more or less to do for water quality, its being done for you.

If you are running salination, then you must be more vigilant to keep up the salt levels and check regularly through the summer that the system has made enough chlorine. If its has not then you need to add more manually.

If you using the manual method, adding chlorine in tablets then the real difference is that you must be extra vigilant. Test every day, and adjust if necessary. Do not over chlorinate as this will do nothing extra.

You are trying to maintain a level of between 2 -3 ppm or 650-680 ORP. At this rate the kill time for bacteria is about 1 second. Over that and you are worsening the situation by contributing to TDS (total dissolved Solids) unnecessarily.

The real difference with an abri is that you have less of a buffer -that is if you get it wrong, it will go green quicker because of the higher temperature. Also, inside the abri is a wonderful habitat for mould and fungus. So cleaning on a regular basis is a must otherwise the whole environment will become extremely unhealthy. There are good products available for cleaning liners, tiles and abri, all biodegradable (PM for details). Clean your abri no less often that you would clean your bathroom.

With such a regime its is a very enjoyable way to manage a pool, however it is more work. From a water quality point of view I can only add that an automatic direct injection system is the way to go as then you'll never have a problem. otherwise, it remains guesswork.

I believe that a pool is for swimming and should not end up as a part time job.

Andrew

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We have got an abri over a liner pool with salination system. It's been installed since May. This is our findings:

We have had problems keeping the Ph levels down. This, I believe is because we have very hard water here and the pool was new and had been filled from the tap. It now seems to have levelled off and stabilised at 7.2.

The salination system has been producing 'chlorine' well to the extent that I have had to turn the production dial down to zero to get the chlorine level down, then trying to find the right level to set it at (10%/20%/30% etc). Whether this high chlorine level is to do with the abri or not is hard to say. You don't lose water through evaporation with an abri and it also cuts out the UV rays, so the chemical levels aren't being altered by these factors.

The water temperature with the abri is excellent. I have a pompe a chaleur which did not need to operate until the end of september. I have it set to 26.5 and it comes on in the morning (after 11am when the air temp is warmer) as the water temp has been dropping to 25/26 overnight - this was the temperature of our old pool without an abri or pompe a chaleur during the summer of 2004! So, the abri is certainly keeping the water warmer by at least 5 degrees compared to friends pool's (which have now been winterized), in fact by the end of the day the heat of the sun has raised the water temp back up to 28 and I am still swimming nearly every day.

Cleaning: we have just given our abri a thorough clean, mainly because the seeds from next door's silver birch tree had gotten in through some small gaps in the rubber seals at ground level. Other wise the abri was not really dirty except for the rubber seals that touch the ground - they were a little slimy. With regard to salt water/abri combination, our abri is coated aluminium and so should not be affected by rust. We have only had to clean it on top where is was dusty/dirty. I would say that a good clean every couple of months would be sufficient from experience (which is less than my bathroom!) We have had no experience of any mould or fungal growth.

On reflection (and had I known about them before we decided on the spec of the system) I think I would have chosen to have an Automated system for the Ph and also for the salination system, that way there is very little to do, and no regular checking of levels.

I hope this gives you some useful info.

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We have a chlorine pool and it is run in winter as in the summer with obviously less filtration required (you half the temperature of the pool and then you filter for the equivalent number of hours). You also need to keep opening up the abri to reduce the growth of algae and mould. We find that a high pressure cleaner cleans everything perfectly well, except the runner seals, which are awful to clean, I find a good quality cleaning product for the mould in bathrooms works best for me. Its not much maintenance at all and the abri has been great for us - we live in North Brittany, our pool is still 27°C and the heater has hardly been on at all this year.

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