What You Should Do to Your Pool After it Rains

Rain In Your Swimming Pool

While light rain will have little, if any, effect on pool water, heavy rainfall can dilute a swimming pool’s chlorine levels, allowing bacteria and algae to start growing. Rain can also lower a pool’s pH. Chlorine becomes hyperactive at a low pH, causing it to be used up more quickly than normal. Not only is unbalanced water unsafe to swim in, but it can also damage the pool’s finish and equipment.

Sometimes after it rains, you will find winds have blow a lot of dirt, leaves and other debris in your pool. …
Check pH and Alkalinity Levels. Acid rain can cause your pH to drop. …
Check Sanitizer Levels. You also want to check your chlorine or sanitizer levels.

Maintaining the proper chemistry in a swimming pool can be very difficult. Heavy rain can greatly influence the chemical balance of pool water in several ways, including a serious effect on chlorine levels. While readjusting your pool water balance after a heavy rain can be frustrating and confusing, it is important to maintain your water chemistry because an unbalanced pool is unsafe to swim in.

TEST YOUR CHLORINE LEVELS
After receiving a severe rain storm, the chlorine levels in your pool will be affected. The amount of rain you received and how quickly it fell at once will play a major role in the affect it will have on your chlorine ppm.

Chlorine will be consumed quickly while fighting the contaminants, so you may need to Shock the pool after a heavy rainfall. This will super-chlorinate the water and kill any remaining pollutants.

In many cases, if you have a torrential downpour pass over your area, your chlorine level may completely zero out. This means your water is no longer being sanitized and will become cloudy, foggy or even begin to form algae in a very short period of time.

The more acidic rain that occurred during your rain event, the lower you pH levels will have dropped. You will need to test your waters pH balance with a test strip or testing kit to determine the current levels in your water.

Here at The Pool Depot we are Chlorination Experts and will check your swimming pool water chemistry for Free when you purchase needed pool chemicals from us to bring your swimming pool & spa water back into balance.

If you like to do it yourself, follow these guidelines for adjusting your pH balance:

Always test the water after it rains so you will know what adjustments you should make.

Using your preferred testing kit, check your water pH balance a few inches below the swimming pools water surface.
The optimum range desired would be somewhere between 7.2 and 7.6 ppm. Slightly outside of this range, should be alright, but you will want to monitor your levels closely to ensure they don’t get farther from the recommended ranges.
If your levels are below 7.2, add Borax to bring your pH balance back to the recommended levels.
In the event that your levels are too high, Muriatic Acid can be used to lower the pH levels.