It may be useful to confirm your current Ph. Chlorine and Total Alkalinity water readings as this may be a clue.
Baz
I concur with Baz
More infomation please... test your water Free Chlorine, pH, Total Alkalinity, Cyanuric Acid.
Its extremly unlikely that your reaction was from chlorine...... do you have a history of hyper senitivity? ITs more likely to be pH out of balance.
Andrew
Chlorine gets a really bad press and is often the first port of call in blame. Pool Guy and Baz are right in that you need to check everything. It may be that you have a heat rash or the problem has been caused by something entirely unrelated to the pool. Don't go crazy with chlorine though. There are also companies out there that will test your water free for you, emailing the results to you and talking them through if you wish.
High alkalinity should not cause pH bounce though you are right, Sharkster, to keep it controlled.
Sharkster: Does high PH and total alkalinity dry out your skin? I have just purchased a digital tester and got somewhat of a shock today when I tested the pool and all the levels are through the roof. So far managed to reduce my PH to normal (I expect this to bounce back up due to high TA) and in the process of reducing TA - was over 200 now at 175, aiming for below 150 tomorrow.. Also with high PH and TA would the total chlorine level stay high, or have I been going a little wild with the chlorine tablets?
Sharkster
The main effect of a high pH is to make an 'itchy, dry irritable' feeling on your skin and to make your eyes sting (tears are about 7.2pH). So its really bad for swimming it also affects the ability of the chlorine to disinfect the water. For example: @7.2pH, 1.5ppm chlorine concentration will result in the life span of E.Cole of 0.5 of a second.
@ 7.6pH - you need nearly 2.5ppm Chlorine to get the same result
@ 7.8pH - you will need nearly 4ppm Chlorine ditto
@ 8 pH - the chlorine is not really doing much at all
In addition to these problems, a High pH will begin to degrade all the pools fittings, make your liner expand causing wrinkles, corrode all metallic surfaces and electrical connections.
Its really important to keep your pH in check which is why a lot of people leave this job to an automatic controller, without it you need to be constantly vigilant.
Your TA reading of 200ppm is fine, no need to panic till you get up to 300ppm or down below 80ppm. pH bounce will only start to trouble you if you go down to very low TA in which case you need to dose with Bi carbonate to soda to bring it up again.
Hope that this has been of help.
Thats fine
Out of interest, which digital tester did you buy? Does it also test for cyanuric acid?
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