How do you "shock" a pool ?

Question

Moving into a house with a pool and I have no clue. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

Answer 1

Officially shocking the pool is called breakpoint chlorination. This means adding free chlorine to the water in high enough concentrations to reach levels 10x higher than the combined chlorine levels. That's the official meaning. Layman's terms is adding high levels of chlorine.

Please drop me a line at [e-mail] and I will be more than happy to help guide you on getting the pool to a good start and maintaining it pristine and healthy. Please include the gallons of the pool, material it's made of (concrete/plaster or vinyl/fiberglass), filtration system (sand filter, DE filter, cartridge filter), chlorination system (floating chlorinator, automatic chlorine feeder, or salt water generator), secondary sanitation systems (ionizers like Frog or Nature2, ozone generators, UV sanitizers, etc), chemicals on hand, and a full water analysis. Take a sample of water to the pool store and ask them to test it for the following:
Total chlorine
Free chlorine
Combined chlorine
pH
Alkalinity
Hardness
Cyanuric acid
Total dissolved solids
Metals
Phosphates

Don't purchase anything from the pool store at this time as I will point you to chemicals that do the same, are chemically the same, but far less expensive than pool store chemicals (Baking soda to raise alkalinity, muriatic acid to lower pH and alkalinity, borax to raise pH, etc).

Send me the above information and I'll be more than happy to continue with you through the rest of the season, winterizing your pool, and opening it next spring.

Answer 2

First, the reason to shock is to get rid of chloramines which is basically spent chlorine that has no value and tends to turn a pool cloudy. It is caused by the breakdown of sweat and suntan lotions from swimmers (among other things). Before you shock the pool, make sure your total alkalinity and pH are stable...which are 80-120, and 7.2 to 7.6 respectively.
If your chlorine is already on the high side, opt for a non-chlorine shock which is sold in powder form in 1 or 2 pound bags. Otherwise, use a chlorine based shock of either powder or liquid form. Read the instructions to see how much to add. The frequency to shock depends on many things, including temperature and bather load, but in general, shocking every other week would be adequate. I have a small pool business and have been maintaining and tending to swimming pools for over 25 years. I hope this answers your question.

Answer 3

go to the pool store and get some "shock" - it is sold by the gallon. The employees there should be able to tell you how much shock to put in your pool, so it is important to know how many gallons of water the pool holds or at least the dimensions of the pool.

Once you've poured the shock into the pool you have to wait at least 24 hours to go swimming. Now you can officially consider yourself "the Mad Scientist". You bring samples of water to the pool supply store, they analyze it and then you pour the chemicals that they say you need in the pool till you find the right mix. You'll use test strip that you dip into the water to measure how accurate your chemical additions were and hopefully the test strip will match the "OK" colors printed on the back of the test strip container.

Answer 4

We just got an Intex pool and we've only shocked it once but it was VERY easy! All you do is open a bag and carefully sprinkle it around the edges of the pool. The kind we got we were able to swim 15 minutes after we shocked it.

Answer 5

Tell it, it was adopted.