Chlorine—If you are a pool owner, you can’t live without it, but the cost of keeping your pool properly chlorinated can be hard to live with. Since chlorinating your pool water is not optional, what can you do cut your chlorination costs to the bone, while still keeping your pool water safe and clean?

In this article, we review four ways of cutting your chlorination cost, without sacrificing the water quality of your pool.

1. Lower your swimming pool water temperature

The simplest way to reduce chlorine usage—and cost—is to lower the water temperature in your pool. Cooler swimming pool water temperatures reduce chlorination costs in two major ways. First, contaminants like algae and bacteria thrive in warmer water, so by lowering your swimming pool water temperature, you can reduce your swimming pool’s contaminants. Less contaminants means less need for chlorine, which translates into more money in your pocket.

Second, temperature affects the speed at which chemical reactions occur. Chlorine reacts more quickly with contaminants in warmer swimming pool water than in cooler swimming pool water. The more quickly chlorine reacts, the sooner it needs to be replenished.

For a heated pool, lower your heater thermostat. For a non-heated pool, you can reduce your pool water temperatures by using aerating jets or fountains, running through solar panels at nighttime, or installing a pool chiller if you are in a warm climate.

2. Install an ozone system

Ozone, an unstable, inorganic gas, is an effective sanitizer that you can use to help reduce chlorine usage in your pool. Ozone sanitizes because, as an oxidizer, it kills bacteria and destroys organic compounds. The fewer of those you have in your pool, the less need you have for other sanitizers like chlorine. Although ozone cannot fully sanitize your pool by itself, it greatly reduces the need for other sanitizers like chlorine. Moreover, the best part is that ozone generators use a free natural resource (oxygen in the air) to produce ozone gas. They consume only small amounts of electrical energy and require very little maintenance.

To read more about ozone generators, click here.

3. Add cyanuric acid to your swimming pool water exposed to sunlight

Cyanuric acid, more commonly known as stabilizer, is a weak acid that can prevent the decomposition of chlorine in your swimming pool. Cyanuric acid works by forming a weak bond with the free chlorine in your swimming pool, which protects the chlorine molecules from the damaging effects of the sun’s ultraviolet rays.

By maintaining proper levels of cyanuric acid in your swimming pool, you can reduce the amount of chlorine needed each swimming season. You should add a stabilizer to your swimming pool at the start of each year’s swimming season, and as needed. Proper concentration levels for cyanuric acid are between 60 – 80 ppm, or 30 and 50 ppm if an ORP controller is used.

4. Install a salt chlorine generator

As its name may suggest, a salt chlorine generator sanitizes swimming pool water by creating chlorine from ordinary table salt. Since you cannot avoid using chlorine, a salt chlorine generator is a great way to provide it.

The main benefit a salt chlorine generator offers is its ability to recycle salt. During the process of electrolysis, as used in a salt chlorine generator to produce chlorine, the chlorine breaks down further into hypochlorous acid and hypochlorite ions, which are sanitizers. After the hypochlorous acid and hypochlorite ions neutralize the contaminants in swimming pool water, they revert to salt, again, only to be broken down into chlorine for another cycle.

To learn more about the process of electrolysis as it relates to salt chlorine generation, click here. To learn more about the benefits and drawbacks of salt chlorine generators, click here.

Following one or more of these steps will help you lower the costs of chlorinating your swimming pool, while still maintaining the crystal clear water that you love swimming in!

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