High Calcium Mean High Problems For Your Swimming Pool

When it comes to owning a swimming pool in Southern California, especially in the Orange County area, dealing with high levels of Calcium Hardness (CH) in the water is extremely common. We’ve found that many parts of the Southwest United States deal with much higher levels than others but many parts of the country in some form deals with moderate to high levels of calcium in their tap water. Since this happens, if you own a residential or commercial swimming pool familiarizing yourself with ways to remove or lower calcium from your swimming pool as well as how to have better water quality is extremely important. We hope this blog post helps to explain why calcium can not only damage your swimming pool but why it’s so important to lower it when levels get high.

Dealing with calcium in your tap water is something you have no control over. This is because it is where our water is sourced and that is why it’s extremely important to familiarize yourself with the harmful effects of it. In the swimming pool industry it’s recommended to have 200-400 parts per million (ppm) Calcium Hardness (CH) in your swimming pool but in the Los Angeles area, the water coming out of the tap can be higher than what is recommended!

So, how do high levels of Calcium Hardness affect your swimming pool?

This is a common question that we get asked and we want to let you know that when water in your swimming pool evaporates, the calcium, magnesium, and other hardness minerals remain in solution and gradually build up in concentration. When calcium levels exceed 500ppm it can scale your water tile line, the interior finish, filtration equipment, decorative water features, spillways and salt chlorinators (if you own one). This can not only be challenging to look at but it can also be extremely expensive to remove. Just this past week we filtered a 25,000-gallon swimming pool with extremely high levels of calcium. When we arrived on site we measured the initial water chemistry:

Calcium Hardness – 830ppm (that is more than double what is recommended)

Total Dissolved Solids – 5500ppm (all pool stores would recommend a water change typically at 3,000ppm)

Cyanuric Acid (CYA) – 50ppm

After filtering this swimming pool for 17 hours, they were able to leave the customer with the following:

Calcium Hardness – 130ppm (this is much lower than our tap water)

Total Dissolved Solids – 820ppm

Cyanuric Acid – 0ppm

Pool Water Recycling offers this service because it is much safer than a drain and refill. Since we are able to conserve 85% of the existing water in a swimming pool this is great for water conservation and drought conditions. The interior finish is never exposed so you can swim in the pool during filtration which means NO DOWNTIME. If you should have questions about how this service works, please contact us today!