Here's the poop on your pool water

Germy pool, lake and hot tub water caused 90 separate outbreaks of illness that killed one person and put nearly 1,800 into the hospital in 2011 and 2012, a new report finds.

Most were caused by bacteria and parasites found in human poop, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention finds in its report. The No. 1 culprit is a germ called Cryptosporidium, which isn't easily killed by standard pool disinfectants.

"Cryptosporidium comes from swimmers. It is swimmers with diarrhea bringing it into the pool," said Michele Hlavsa, chief of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Healthy Swimming Program.

Health officials only started reporting on diseases related to recreational water in 2010. Hlavsa and colleagues collected data for 2011 and 2012, the most recent available, and found that despite chlorination and other disinfecting methods, waterborne illness is common.

"For 2011-2012, the most recent years for which finalized data were available, public health officials from 32 states and Puerto Rico reported 90 recreational water-associated outbreaks to CDC's Waterborne Disease and Outbreak Surveillance System," they wrote in the CDC's weekly report on disease.

Hotel pools and hot tubs are a common source of the outbreaks, the CDC team found. Nearly 20 percent of outbreaks caused by treated water were linked to a hotel or motel, and most were tracked to spas and hot tubs.

Having maintained a private pool, and a hot tub...

I will say that although I didn't much care for the State of NC as a whole, I did appreciate their focus on restaurant and public pool cleanliness maintenance.

Every food facility had a prominently placed grade and date of the last inspection. Eat at your own risk.

My apartment complex pool was occasionally closed, generally after a hard rain, if chemical testing samples were off.
The property managers didn't wait for a fine, they tested the pool daily themselves.
They wouldn't have tested daily, absent the very real possibility that they were subject to no-notice inspections, hefty fines, and public grades of pool maintenance failure.

I’ve got a reputation around here for being the pool chemistry guru, and I can tell you that nearly every problem pool that I look at has CYA > 100... often times it’s beyond testing.

CYA=Cyanuric Acid
CYA=Conditioner
CYA=Stabilizer

Those three things are all the same thing. Cyanuric acid is the bonding agent in Dichlor and Trichlor, and is needed in pools exposed to the sun. But people keep adding tablets (Trichlor) and powder (Dichlor) and those add more and more and more CYA to the pool, until you can’t put enough chlorine in the pool to kill off the goo (Scientific term for yucky stuff).

FC/Stabilizer table for algae free operation of OUTDOOR pools

Stabilizer . . . . . . Min. FC . . . . Max FC . . . ‘Shock’ FC
=> 0 ppm . . . . . . . 1 ppm . . . . . 3 ppm . . . . 10 ppm
=> 10 - 20 ppm . . . . 2 ppm . . . . . 5 ppm . . . . 12 ppm
=> 30 - 50 ppm . . . . 3 ppm . . . . . 6 ppm . . . . 15 ppm
=> 60 - 90 ppm . . . . 5 ppm . . . . . 10 ppm . . .. 20 ppm
=> 100 - 200 ppm . . . 8 ppm . . . . . 15 ppm . . .. 25 ppm
________________________________________________________________

Raise PH without raising TA - Borax
Raise TA without raising PH - Baking Soda (sodium bicarbonate)
Raise PH and TA - Soda Ash
Lower PH and TA - Muriatic Acid
Raise Calcium hardness - Calcium Chloride
Lower CH - anhydrous trisodium phosphate or drain and dilute
Lower CYA - Drain and Dilute

Trichlor has a pH of around 2 while dichlor has a pH of around 6.
Trichlor is slow dissolving so it is suitable for forming into tablets for use in erosion feeders.
Dichlor is very fast dissolving so it is sold in granular form and is not really suitable for use in erosion feeders.

Dichlor: Adding 1ppm of FC adds .9ppm CYA
Trichlor: Adding 1ppm of FC adds .6ppm CYA
Cal-Hypo: Adding 1ppm of FC adds .7ppm CH

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