We Have Essential Pool Chemicals and Pool Supplies Online
Your pool or your hot tub might very well be your favorite place in your home. It’s very much like a vacation spot where you can get away from it all without even having to travel. Not only is a pool or a spa or hot tub a much-appreciated area of your home, but if properly cared for and set up can be a real value add for your property as well.
Given the fact that your outdoor space can offer you so much in the way of recreation and potentially in investment, it’s important to take proper care of it. You may remember a time when you knew little about taking proper care of a pool because to those who have never maintained a pool it might seem much more simple than it really is. The truth is that caring for a pool for an ongoing and fairly intensive process that requires careful and practiced attention to the environment and the chemical balance of the pool.
Taking proper care of a pool will require you to understand the specific needs of your pool and add the right chemicals at the proper concentrations - at the right time - to ensure that your pool stays clean, clear, aesthetically pleasing and safe to use. Here at Hot Tub Club, we pair many years of experience with a line that includes all of the pool supplies that you could hope to find online. Start here if you’re looking for information on the following pool supplies online, and don’t hesitate to reach out to us if you have any questions regarding the well being of your pool or hot tub.
Swimming Pool Sanitizers
Properly sanitizing your pool or hot tub is critical to ensuring its safety and is the first measure against bacteria, viruses and other infections that otherwise might gain a foothold in a pool. Sanitizers, simply put, are chemicals added to the water to prevent infectious agents and other contaminants from growing in a pool. There is more than one type of sanitizer that you can use, but overall, most people use chlorine or bromine in some form to keep their pools and hot tubs safe to use.
Chlorine-based sanitizers - Chlorine is an effective sanitizer because it is highly reactive and very effective at killing bacteria and removing other undesirable biological entities from swimming pools and hot tubs. Chlorine works by oxidizing contaminants. As chlorine works to disinfect a pool, it produces chloramines which are known by their smell. These byproducts of chlorine sanitizers are what give pools their characteristic ‘chlorine’ smell.
Chlorine sanitizer is typically administered to pools in the form of granules or tablets. Chlorine granules can be added directly to the water of a pool to help keep it at the proper sanitary level of chlorine concentration of about 3 parts per million. While it can be convenient to some, adding chlorine granules to a pool can be time-consuming, as soon the chlorine will fairly rapidly dissipate you will have to add chlorine to the pool on a constant basis. Adding the granules directly to the pool also offers the potential drawback that the chlorine will not be properly dispersed around the pool, leaving pockets of water that haven’t been properly disinfected. There are ways around this, however.
Some prefer to use chlorine sanitizer in the form of tablets that require a chlorine dispenser or a chlorinator to keep your pool at the proper level. Tablets slowly dissolve over time in order to reduce the number of times you need to actively add chlorine to your pool.
Bromine based sanitizers - Chlorine used as a sanitizer in pools and hot tubs has a lot of benefits, namely the fact that it’s effective and also much more affordable than using bromine as an alternative.
If chlorine is effective and more affordable than bromine, then why is bromine so much more popular as a sanitizer among certain users? There are actually a few reasons why some people choose to add bromine to their pools or hot tubs.
The first is that some people don’t like the smell of chloramines that chlorine produces as it works. As bromine destroys contaminants it produces bromamines that are far less offensive to the senses than chlorine, so some people prefer bromine for that reason.
In addition, bromine is less stable than chlorine, so a pool or a hot tub maintained at the ideal bromine concentration of about 5 parts per million will likely remain effective for longer than a pool or hot tub treated with chlorine. In addition, bromine happens to be more stable at higher temperatures, which makes it more suitable for some who maintain hot tubs.
Whether you want to use chlorine or bromine is your choice, but we offer solutions for both here at LeisureQuip, and you can always call us to get our advice on your situation.
We also happen to offer alternatives to both options here on our site.
Pool Shock
In addition to regular and routine sanitation of your pool or hot tub from time to time, you’ll want to shock your pool as well. Shocking a pool is aptly named because that’s just about exactly what you’re doing to it - you’re ‘shocking’ the pool with a higher dosage of sanitizer than you normally use to keep the pool sanitary. Basically, shocking the pool, for example, using chlorine, is simply spiking the level of sanitizer in the pool to keep certain contaminants under control.
Adding a higher than normal level of sanitizer than usual to your pool or hot tub can help to purge the system of any bacteria, viruses or other contaminants that may have been in the water. It’s also a good preventative measure to prevent algae blooms from occurring as it will destroy colonies of bacteria. In addition, shocking the pool periodically is a good practice because it is an extra safeguard against lurking contaminants, not to mention the fact that shocking will also help to control the chloramines that will be produced through routine sanitation if you are using a chlorine-based sanitizer.
Some good practices are to shock a pool after opening it after the winter, after large gatherings or parties, after a large rainstorm and any time after the pool has been introduced to environmental contaminants accidentally. It’s also a good practice to shock your pool from time to time even if you aren’t shocking it in response to one of these conditions.
Many shocks use unstabilized chlorine, which means that the UV radiation from sunlight will destroy most or all of it in short order. In order to get the desired effects from shocking your pool, it’s advisable to do it at night so that the shock will have time to work its magic before being exposed to the ultraviolet light that will destabilize it.
Balancing Pool Chemicals
In addition to sanitizer and shock which perform very similar functions, you’ll need to use the right balancing chemicals to ensure the right levels of pH, metals, and minerals in your pool.
For example, maintaining the proper pH level in your pool water is very important. This isn’t just because excess acidity or alkalinity would be uncomfortable, but also to enable the sanitizers that you use to do their jobs. For instance, chlorine is most effective when the environment is very slightly basic, somewhere around a pH of 7.5.
That being said, anything that enters your pool, including the people swimming in it, will affect the pH, either raising or lowering it unduly. You can use pH increasers and decreasers in order to maintain the optimum pH level in your pool or hot tub to keep them comfortable and sanitary, and we offer pH increasers and decreasers right here on our site.
Something else you may find yourself needing to measure and regulate is water hardness, specifically calcium hardness. This can be largely affected by factors such as the source from which you fill your pool, and both high and low levels of hardness are associated with issues.
If your pool water is too hard, you may experience problems associated with scaling and cloudy water. Scale isn’t just unsightly, it can also reduce the efficiency of your pool’s filter but also diminish the ability of any lines feeding your pool. If the hardness is too low you may experience problems associated with degradation of your pool liner and pitting or dissolution of grout or concrete.
While you won’t want to experience any of these issues, the good news is that we offer both scale inhibitor and calcium hardness increaser here on our site.
We also offer useful products like our BioGuard Pool Magnet Plus Stain Prevention, which removes metals from pools and prevents staining due to metal concentration.
Pool Algae Control
Besides the fact that pools will need to be balanced and sanitized, you may want to invest in algae control. In fact, if you’ve ever faced a bloom, you’ll know first hand just how important it can be to maintain the pool in a fashion that inhibits the growth of algae in the first place.
Proper sanitation will keep algae from blooming in your pool or hot tub, but if there’s ever an imbalance algae can gain a foothold and grow rapidly. If that ever happens you’ll want to use an algicide to prevent the bloom from growing or spreading. Here at Hot Tub Club, we offer algae inhibitors that are meant to prevent algae from forming in the first place while also not interfering with the pool’s pH balance.
In addition to inhibitors, we offer killers that can help you deal with algae if it ever gains a hold in your pool or hot tub. For example, our copper-based algicides are effective at killing algae within 24 hours in order to kill established algae and halt the spread of a bloom. In addition to our algicide, we also offer spot killers for specific applications.
Winterizing Chemicals and Other Miscellaneous Treatments
At the end of the season when you need to prepare your pool or hot tub for closer over the winter months there are steps you can take to protect it during the off-season. Here at Hot Tub Club, we offer specialized algae inhibitors and shocks that you can use before winterizing your pool to help make it easier on yourself to open the pool back up the following season.
Our winterizing algae inhibitor can be used in the off-season to prevent algae from growing in the pool, and our winter shock treatment can keep your pool clean through the winter. However, it also contains clarifiers and flocculants to keep your pool clean but also clear for reopening the following year.
Speaking of which, we also offer clarifiers and flocculants that you can use throughout the season as part of the routine maintenance you perform to keep your pool pristine and crystal clear. Our natural clarifier is safe to use, cannot be overapplied, does not pose a risk of staining and works with all different types of pool surfaces and treatments. We also offer flocculant, which like a clarifier can help restore your water to sparkling clear splendor. Flocculant, however, works by causing fine particulate matter suspended in the pool to aggregate and sink to the bottom of the pool where it can be vacuumed up.
In addition to these supplies, when you come to LeisureQuip to buy your hot tub or swimming pool supplies online, you can find others including non-chlorine based treatments and water enhancers as well. Better even than the collection of pool supplies online that we offer in our store is the expertise we can offer you. With many years of experience serving the pool industry, we can help you find the products you need to maintain your pool or hot tub. Don’t be shy about giving us a call at 866-546-8882 and we’ll help you find the products you need for your situation and requirements.