Clorox Pool & Spa Shock Plus
Easiest to Use
This Clorox 4-in-1 powder formula of pool shock can be poured right into your pool from the bottle on a weekly basis.
The powder not only works to clear up your pool water by killing bacteria, but it also can help improve filter performance. The product dissolves quickly in the water, making your pool safe to swim in within about 30 minutes of the application.
You can also use this product with the Clorox mobile app. The app allows you to check daily water sample results and chemical needs for your pool, so you know exactly how much shock to add.
- Clorox Pool & Spa Shock Plus: Easiest to Use
What Happens When You Add A Lot Of Shock
Adding a ton of shock to your pool just for the heck of it wont speed up the cleaning process. If its your first time shocking a pool, and you see unexpected cloudiness, dont panic and start aggressively dumping shock into your pool. Some cloudiness is normal and to be expected. In order to clear out a cloudy pool after shocking, you will need to keep your pump and filter on with the circulation continually running. This will likely take 4-6 hours.
Even though it should only take 4-6 hours to clear the cloudiness, you shouldnt measure your chlorine levels the same day youve shocked the pool. High chlorine levels will bleach your test strip and give you a false reading. This false reading may convince you that your pool doesnt have enough shock when, in reality, it does. You want to avoid adding excess chlorine, so its best to wait a few days before testing the water. The best thing you can do if you put too much shock in your pool is to wait it out. Pro tip: the more sunlight your pool water gets, the faster the shock will dissipate.
How Often To Shock Your Pool
You dont want to wait for a bad smell or itchy eyes to happen before you shock your pool. We recommend shocking your pool once a week, or at least once every other week to properly maintain your water chemistry. The more often you use the pool, the more often you should reach for the swimming pool shock.
In addition to your weekly or semi-weekly treatments, you may want to perform an extra pool shock under certain circumstances, such as after:
- heavy pool use
- a severe rainstorm or damaging winds
- a major water level change
- a bowel-related pool accident
Think of extra shocks as insurance against wayward algae and other contaminants. Its better to take out any bacteria before it has a chance to affect the quality of your water or make anyone sick.
Don’t Miss: Is The Mandalay Bay Pool Open
What Time Of Day Is Best To Shock A Pool
Ideally you should shock a pool in the evening, to ensure that the sun is not eating away at the chlorine in the pool before it has a chance to work. The sun is always the enemy of any pool owners as it causes chemical reactions with the water to bond free chlorine with other chemicals like nitrogen.
This is a natural process as the sun adds heat to the pool, making reactions a lot more possible and giving the free chlorine the chance to react with everything comfortably. We highly recommend that you ensure that the pool is not heated while doing this and having the water be its natural temperature.
Usually, this is why you will find that pools need to be shocked as the temperatures change as well, as the sunlight through the day lasts longer. Adding a shock treatment at night will mean that the pool is ready and willing to stop anything from growing when the sun does eventually start to rise.
Check Your Pool Chemistry
After youve waited the recommended number of hours, you still need to test your pools chlorine levels before letting anyone swim.
Make sure the levels have returned to normal before you allow anyone in.
Note that low pH levels are important here: if your pH level is over 8.0, your pool shock is basically useless. Shoot for a pH level of around 7.2 if you need to lower it.
Also Check: How Do You Get Iron Out Of Pool Water
When To Shock Your Pool
You might have noticed the instructions on chlorine shocks say they need to be used after the sun has gone down. This is because the sun will burn off unstabilized chlorine, which means the shock wont be as effective. Shocking your pool at night makes sure the chemicals work the way they were meant to.
What Is A Pool Shock
Pool shock is a solution that you pour in the water of a pool to bring it back to safe swimming standards. For example, when a pool has not been cleaned or tested for its pH level for quite some time, there is a chance that it might have developed an unhealthy number of bacteria.
Similarly, if the bacteria have become resistant to a specific type of chlorine, your daily or weekly small doses might just not be enough anymore. Even the best algaecide for pools might not be enough here, particularly if it is used in the small standard amounts.
In this case, you use a pool shock to practically cleanse the pool. Essentially, a pool shock includes a massive dose of chemicals that have the purpose of destroying those harmful bacteria as well as any contaminants that might be in your pool.
To explain, pool shock simply spikes the existent chlorine levels of your pool sometimes, up to five times the normal levels. During the process, the water is not only sanitized, but the combined chlorine molecules are also oxidized. This will give the free chlorine levels a boost which is essentially the good chlorine.
Most of the time, pool shock is used when the pool has not been given proper maintenance for quite a long time. However, some owners like to shock their pool every few weeks, particularly if it is used often. Contaminating natural events such as storms or heavy rainfalls might also require that you give your pool a shock.
Also Check: Is The Mandalay Bay Pool Open
Balancing Your Pool Water
As stated above, shocking your swimming pool is an essential part of maintaining it. Even if the water appears clear, that doesnt necessarily mean its chemically balanced. When a pool is used frequently, sunscreen, sweat, makeup, and lotion are deposited into the water, which can affect its balance. Whether swimmers leave behind contaminants or they crop up naturally, your pool water needs ongoing care to remain clean, balanced, and healthy.
Pool Calculator makes testing, treating, shocking, and balancing your swimming pool hassle-free and straightforward. First, you need to find the best pool test kit, then drop your chemical ranges into our handy app, and well show you which products to add and how much of each is needed to stabilize the water. Get the Pool Calculator app for your desktop or on your Android or iOS mobile device to get started.
Your Complete Guide: Home Pool Shock 101
Louie Warco
To keep your pool clean, safe, and healthy for the best possible swimming experience there are specific tasks that must be completed before diving in. To ensure crisp, freshwater one of those tasks to check off the list is shocking your pool. Shocking your swimming pool or spa has always been good practice for recreational water management. Regardless of the type of sanitation system youve chosen, shocking will typically be required.
Read Also: How To Take Calcium Off Pool Tile
Dark Green Pool Water
If you have dark green pool water, you should look to follow the above steps, but with a slightly higher dose of acid and chlorine. Adding, for example, 2 to 3 litres of acid over a space of 48 hours and adding 2 to 3 cups of granulated chlorine. Also, darker green water may also be a cause of stagnant debris sitting on the bottom of the pool which needs to be cleaned out before you dose it. Be sure that this has all been scooped up using a leaf shovel, followed by being manually vacuumed out of the pool using a vacuum head, an appropriate length hose for your pool and a telepole.
Why Shock Treatment Your Swimming Pool
Super chlorinating a pool is part of the normal maintenance routine. Shock will kill bacteria, algae and eliminate the build-up of chloramines in the water. Many pool owners fail to shock their pool on a regular basis running the risk of their pool turning green, cloudy or having unbalanced water that begins to damage pool surfaces and equipment.
You May Like: Vdara Pool Cabana
What Is A Pool Shock What Types Are There
A pool shock is a project of inputting chlorine or non-chlorine chemicals to your swimming pool to raise your level of free chlorine. When your free chlorine levels are too low, bacteria, algae, and chloramines begin to crowd your swimming pool and make it unsanitary. By shocking your pool consistently, you can create the right amount of chlorine that keeps your pool and family safe.
The typical chlorine smell that you experience around the pool does not mean that it has been cleaned. This odor exists when the chlorine in the pool gets combined with the nitrogen in oils, sweat, urine, and other bodily fluids. A potent smell of chlorine usually means that the water has been improperly treated, but it does not necessarily give you the signal when it is time to clean the pool.
So, what are the different kinds of pool shock? There are many different products that you can utilize, but here are the most popular and effective ones. For recommendations on specific pool shock products, read my guide on the best pool shock.
How To Shock A Salt Water Pool
You need to frequently super chlorinate your saltwater swimming pool.
You need to frequently and manually add chlorine to a fresh water pool to ensure the pool water is sanitized from bacteria and algae. Normally, an automatic chlorine dispenser is used such as a floating tablet holder. The chlorine tablet slowly dissolves into the water providing adequate free chlorine to the pool.
A salt water pool has pool salt, which is sodium chloride, dissolved into the water. The level of salinity is very weak. Its nowhere near as salty as seawater so its very safe for people to swim in. The free chlorine is generated by running the pool water through a chlorinator cell after the filter unit. The chlorinator cell operates with an electrical current over an anode and cathode to chemically split the chlorine from the salt. Effectively, a salt water pool is a chlorinated pool. It has the same amount of free chlorine in the water as a chlorinated fresh water pool.
Turn up and down the salt water chlorinator to produce the desired level of chlorine for your pool. However, turning up the chlorinator and/or running the pump longer still doesnt usually generate enough chlorine to shock the pool. So you need to add shock to a salt water pool as you would a fresh water pool.
Read Also: How To Fix Cracks In Pool Deck
How Does Clear Comforts Aop Affect Pool Shocking
By lowering chlorine demand down to drinking-water levels, Clear Comforts advanced oxidation, or AOP, pool treatment system reduces the frequency you need to shock your pool. With fewer chemicals needed to achieve clear, clean, and healthy water quality, Clear Comforts AOP pool system reduces your time spent on balancing chemicals.
Using a patented and award-winning AOP technology, Clear Comfort uses powerful hydroxyl radicals that quickly destroy unwanted contaminants in pool and spa water, thus the reason for dramatically reducing chemical consumption, combined chlorine, and other DBPs. With Clear Comfort, pools, spas, hydrotherapy tubs, water parks, and more can get the best water quality with the least maintenance allowing you and your family to Swim Happy.
To learn more about how to maintain your pool with Clear Comforts AOP, read our blog How to take care of a Clear Comfort pool .
Hth Ultimate Shock Treatment
Best All-In-One Treatment
This ultimate shock treatment promises to do more than just clear up the algae settling in the bottom of your pool.
The amount of Calcium Hypochlorite in this product kills bacteria and algae quickly and with every use. The chemical composition also works to reduce eye irritation from the pool water and prevent the formation of calcium buildup.
This pool shock can be used in all pool types, even those with a liner, which can be an issue with other pool shock solutions that cause the liner to fade.
The Visible Blue action included in this product allows it to appear blue while in use in the water. The blue coloring lets you track the spread of the product and see for yourself that the shock treatment is at work.
Read Also: Diy Salt Water Pool Conversion
What Amount Of Chlorine Shock Do I Add In My Pool
Liquid chlorine or sodium hypochlorite is always around 12.5% chlorine. Regular bleach is less stronger compared to sodium hypochlorite and is always around 8%you will need to use a lot of it, as compared to sodium hypo.
For regular pool sanitization and clearing cloudy water, the right amount of liquid chlorine to add to your pool will depend on your pool size and the percentage of chlorine you are using. For instance, 10 fluid ounces of 12.5% HASA Sani-Clor or Chloro Guard will provide enough liquid chlorine to raise FC on 10,000 gallons of pool water by 1 ppm.
However, if you have severely cloudy pool water with the following signswon’t clear easily after adding a lot of chlorine, high combined chlorine levels , or very low free chlorine and cyanuric acid levelsyou might be having ammonia in your pool, and you need extra work to clear stubborn cloudy pool water caused by ammonia.
For algae treatment, I always recommend using calcium hypochlorite, which is stronger and always comes with around 60% chlorine concentration. To kill algae, you need to triple shock your swimming pool using calcium hypo. For instance, for sanitising a pool using cal hypo , 1 pound of In The Swim cal hypo should work for a 10,000-gallon pool. As such, since you need to triple shock the pool in case of algae breakout, you will need 3 pounds of calcium hypochlorite chlorine shock to kill green, black, and yellow algae in a 10,000-gallon pool.
Shocking A Pool What Is It Why And When To Do It
Despite how it sounds shocking a pool has nothing to do with electricity or with revealing something completely unexpected.
Shocking is the process of adding chemicals to your pool to:
- break apart chloramines, also known as combined chlorine
- quickly raise your chlorine level
- kill algae, bacteria or other harmful pathogens
Chloramines Bad, Free Chlorine Good
The most common reason for shocking your pool or spa is to deal with combined chlorine. There are three measurements of chlorine in pool or spa water: free chlorine, combined chlorine, and total chlorine.
Free chlorine is just that, free. Free to interact with other chemicals, algae, bacteria or the like. We like free chlorine because when it interacts with these potentially harmful things, it usually kills them and off-gasses them into the atmosphere. Once it has done that, it continues its carefree lifestyle moving on to look for the next thing with which it can interact.
Total chlorine is simply the combination of free and combined chlorine.
Shocking then releases the combined chlorine and off-gasses the contaminants, increasing the amount of free chlorine in your pool or spa. The question of whether to use a chlorinated or non-chlorinated shock will depend on how much total chlorine you have in your pool or spa. If your total chlorine level is high, you will use a non-chlorine shock if it is low, you will use a chlorinated shock.
Zero Chlorine Bad, 3-5ppm Good
Is That Algae I See?
Nighty-night
You May Like: Can Vdara Use Aria Pool
When To Shock Treatment Your Swimming Pool
In the summer season when your pool is in constant use you must shock treatment the swimming pool every week or fortnight. In the off seasons when the pool is not being used once a month or every second month is sufficient to maintain free chlorine levels.
The best time of day to add shock to your pool is in the evening after you have finished using the pool for the day and just before the pump is due to operate.
Adding the shock after the sun has gone down will ensure it works all night as there is no ultraviolet light to reduce its effectiveness. Also it is cooler reducing chlorine evaporation from the water.
You must always circulate the water in the pool after adding shock so the best time to add is just before the pump comes on. Make sure the pump is going to run for at least 4 hours to thoroughly mix in the shock chemical. Do not swim in a pool straight after adding shock chemicals because the high free chlorine will sting your eyes and itch your skin.
Shock treatment your pool in the evening to guarantee its sanitized and fresh ready for swimming the next day.
Spaguard Enhanced Spa Shock
SpaGuard Enhanced Spa Shock also stands out among the competition as a multi-purpose pool shock. It contains high amounts of chlorine to eliminate bacteria, residue, and other built-up contaminants in your pool, hot tub, or home spa. This pool shock also has a pH buffer, which helps you maintain water balance.
In addition to removing contaminants and balancing your water, it gets rid of unpleasant pool odors and helps restore clarity. Its also one of the most affordable pool shocks you can buy.
Read Also: Best Cyanuric Acid Reducer
