Can You Throw Chlorine Tablets in the Pool? Know the Facts!

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Are you a pool owner? Or have you just started a swimming pool business? In both cases, you should be putting a considerable proportion of investment in your swimming pool’s sanitation and cleanliness.

Clean and pure water is the hallmark of a good swimming pool. No one likes pools with a high level of toxicity, germs, bacteria, and pollution. You can quickly lose your customers if you don’t pay attention to your swimming pool’s sanitation. So, can you just throw a chlorine tablet in the pool?

You should never throw chlorine tablets directly into your pool. Should you do this it will allow them to dissolve directly on the pool floor and it could cause damage along with creating a permanent bleach stain on your pool material whether a liner or concrete.

When it comes to keeping your swimming pools safe from various bacteria and toxicity, you can employ a plethora of measures.

Chlorine is available in the markets in the form of tablets, granules, and sticks. In this article, we shall be looking at one of the most popular methods of doing so, i.e., the application of chlorine.

Adding chlorine tablets is considered a handy way of sanitizing the pool. They readily dissolve in the water and slowly constitute the chlorine concentration in the water. So, let’s discuss it in detail.

What Amount of Chlorine Tablets Can Be Added In the Pool?

The number of chlorine tablets is always commensurate to the size of the swimming pool. Most experts recommend that the swimming pool’s chlorine concentration should be 1 part per million (ppm).

Keeping the concentration within the confines of this quantity is necessary to eliminate the risk of contaminants. We shall discuss in detail chlorinating the pool since too much chlorine can cause irritation and other issues.

You should additionally do pool tests to determine the level of chlorine regularly and whether or not the amount of chlorine is adequate or not. Typically, a 20,000 0r 16,000 gallons sized pool will be sanitized with four chlorine tablets.

How to Add Chlorine Tablets Into Your Pool?

You need to understand chlorine tablets because you must know the adequate method of applying them to your pool. The people who are accustomed to chlorine use in the form of granules might employ the same method with a tablet, but it’s simply wrong and harmful.

You should never directly throw chlorine tablets into the swimming pool. Adding them directly into the swimming pool can make the tablets dissolve much slower and create ugly bleach stains on the pool floor.

There are several ways you can add chlorine tablets into your pool and ensure that your pool remains clean and pure.

Using a Skimmer 

A skimmer is a plastic gadget (typically made up of PVC) that holds a basket. There are many types of pool skimmers; the most common are inground pool skimmers and above-ground pool skimmers.

Inground Pool Skimmers

These are placed in a way that the bottom half of the skimmer remains underwater. They are placed around the pool and are rectangular shaped. These have a door called a “weir,” which opens and closes when needed. The weir closes when you shut the pump off.

Above Ground Pool Skimmers 

They can be either mounted on the side of the pool or mobile, i.e., freely floating around the swimming pool. Depending on the demand and/or preference, you can install any of the mentioned kinds of skimmers.

How Can You Use Skimmer for Chlorination?

Skimmers are used for circulation and filtration. It filters and collects floating debris of contamination and thereby sanitizes the pool. You can use the skimmer to apply chlorine into the swimming pool; you can directly add chlorine tablets to the skimmer.

When the filter runs, the tablets come in contact with the water, and the tablet readily dissolves in the water. The chlorinated water is pushed into the water through the jet, and the chlorinated water becomes a part of the pool.

To prevent over chlorination in the swimming pool, you can either remove partially dissolved tablets from the skimmer or never put excess amounts of tablets in the pool.

Since the chlorination will continue to occur even when the filter isn’t running, you need to pay attention to the number of chlorine tablets.

Using a Chlorine Dispenser 

They are plastic gadgets that freely float around the pool. They are not that expensive and easy to maintain, but you happen to have a pool liner, then they might not be the best option for you.

These dispensers continue to disperse the chlorine tablets as they freely float around the pool, thus even sanitizing it.

You can simply put the tablets inside the dispenser and leave the sanitization to it. But there’s a major drawback to it; these dispensers can get stuck in one location of the pool and disperse tablets in only one area, thus uneven sanitization.

When skimmers and dispensers are compared together, a dispenser is the correct choice.

Using an Automatic Chlorinator 

The chlorinator is simply the best option to consider when you want to sanitize your swimming pool. With an automatic chlorinator, you can optimally control the chlorine concentration of the pool.

It saves you from running into various issues that you can into while using skimmers and dispensers. You can simply put chlorine tablets in the chlorinator and tune the settings as per your need.

This gadget has the highest level of precision and efficiency when you compare it with other gadgets. You can optimally regulate the cleanliness of the pool with this gadget.

How Many Chlorine Tablets Do I Need?

For many new pool owners, this can be a question they face fairly fast to keep their pool clean and functional for use, I know because I had this same question and had to read and learn much like you today!

The right amount of chlorine tablets for your pool is quite easy to figure out as you just need to know your pool volume. You need one tablet per 5000 gallons so if your pool was 10000 gallons this would be 2, if 12000 gallons you would use 3 as you don’t want to under chlorinate.

As long as you remember this number managing chlorine tablets for your pool will be a simple thing and not cause you any issues and will help you keep the pool clean for your enjoyment!

What Is the Appropriate Time to Add Chlorine Tablets In the Pool?

To maintain a healthy swimming environment, you need to check for adequate doses of chlorine tablets. You need to add the right and healthy amount of chlorine into the water. Let’s briefly discuss the guidelines for adding chlorine to the water.

The Chlorine Value 

There are two values that you need to pay attention to when evaluating what’s the right time to apply chlorine in the swimming pool. The first is the chlorine value, which we have already discussed i.e., 1 ppm or 1.5 ppm.

The second will be the pool’s pH value, which needs to be between 7.2 and 7.6. You should check for both of these values twice a week. You can also use gadgets to check for these values, such as a test kit.

As we are now done with the adequate use of chlorine and the adequate amount and the adequate time to apply it! Let us consider the harmful effects of over chlorination.

What Are the Side Effects of Over Chlorination?

The excess of everything is bad. Chlorine is necessary for sanitation but, at the same time, is very dangerous if you are exposed to it in larger proportions. Lazy and improper pool maintenance can lead to very detrimental effects on health.

Over saturating your swimming pool with chlorine can lead to chlorine poisoning. Chlorine in excess amounts has been shown to harm the lungs, eyes, skin, and heart of swimmers.

While chlorine kills pathogens and bacteria and improves the swimmer’s fitness when it’s in moderate amounts, the excess can easily discourage the swimmer from swimming into the pool with too much chlorine.

Some pools don’t pay attention to this important regulation of their pools and thus end up with over chlorination pools. You might have heard examples from your relatives or friends about people who fainted when they were in the swimming pool for too long because that pool had too much chlorine.

Too much chlorine hurts swimmers and can result in you losing your customers. Let’s discuss the symptoms someone will express when exposed to a high quantity of chlorine. 

Nausea and Vomiting 

Diving into a pool with a large chlorine concentration can be extremely detrimental to the swimmer’s nervous system can bring about a sudden onset of nausea and vomiting.

Burning/Irritation of Throat

A swimmer, when exposed to too much chlorine, will experience a burning sensation in his throat.

Irritation in Eyes

When someone comes in contact with too much chlorine, he will experience alarming irritation in his or her eyes.

Complication in Breathing

Too much exposure to chlorine will compromise your lung’s ability to respire and inhale; therefore, you will experience difficulty breathing.

Redness of Skin

It’s another form of skin irritation that occurs due to exposure to chlorine water. The skin becomes itchy, and painful red rashes appear on the skin.

Chest Pain

The chest pain is related to the breathing complications one faces when he is exposed to an excessive amount of chlorine in the swimming pool.

Final Thoughts on Can You Just Throw a Chlorine Tablet in the Pool

Chlorine tablets are one of the most effective ways to regulate the cleanliness of your swimming pool; it is easily doable and readily dissolve into the pool water to sanitize the pool water.

They need to be applied adequately into the water by using a gadget. You need to pay attention to the amount of chlorine you put into water as the excess of chlorine in water becomes harmful to the swimmers.

You also need to check the pH value of the pool twice a week.