Water Treatment Equipment For Pools, Spas & Water Features

   One of the problems with water chemistry in many areas is high fill water hardness, resulting in high calcium hardness in the pool, spa or water feature.  This often results in ugly scale deposits.  The two commonly recommended fixes are adding a sequestering agent or dilution.  There are two additional options, water softening and reverse osmosis.

   When water softening is mentioned the first thing everyone says is "You can't fill a plaster pool with soft water, it wil ruin the plaster!"  While that is true, no one said "fill" the pool with soft water.  No, soften the makeup water to control the calcium hardness level.  Besides, filling a pool with soft water would require either a far larger softener than is normally installed or several regenerations during the filling.  The application of a softener will be described below (soon).

   Another option which is becoming more economical, especially for water features, is Reverse Osmosis treatment of the makeup water to control hardness.  An RO system will remove 90% or more of the dissolved solids in the makeup water.  The application of RO will be described below (soon).

   Another problem often encountered with pools is electrolysis.  This can be a big problem with stainless steel filters especially on larger pools.  The typical recommendation is "put a zinc ball behind the light or in the pump basket."  Well if you have tried that you know how well that works!  So after much experimenting I came up with a simple fix that works quite well.  (To be described below soon.)