Preventing Pool Problems

If your swimmers are complaining about red eyes and irritation, there's a good chance that they may not want to swim there again. Unfortunately, irritated eyes usually indicate a high level of germ infestation or excessive chlorine, but treating these problems is relatively easy and should be manageable by any pool owner.

Encourage Hygienic Behaviors

Chlorine is an effective way to kill many germs in your pool, but it may not be able to kill them all immediately. As a result, germs and other contaminants may catch a ride on a person's body and hang around in the water long enough to attack the eyes of one of your swimmers.

That's why you need to set hygienic guidelines that your swimmers must follow on every visit. These guidelines include:

• Not swallowing the water
• Taking care of bathroom needs before swimming
• Regular bathroom breaks for children
• Inspecting diapers regularly and changing away from the pool

Set Up Showers

People tend to jump into the pool after the end of a hard, hot day. Often, they get in without taking care of the materials that might be clinging to their body, such as sweat, waste material, makeup, and their body oils. As a result, that material usually ends up floating in the pool, where it poses a risk of irritating eyes.

Install showers outside of your pool and make a pre-swim shower mandatory for all swimmers to eliminate this problem. Some people will undoubtedly complain, but it should greatly decrease the amount of outside material brought into the pool with each swimmer.

Offer Goggles to Swimmers

While you shouldn't make goggles an absolute requirement for your swimmers, making them available for interested people will help cut down on red eye. Goggles have been shown to protect eyes from irritation and contamination, which makes them particularly useful for pools.

However, you can definitely encourage the use of goggles by creating swimming games centered around using them. For example, you could create a "treasure hunt" that involves finding items at the bottom of the pool.

Use the Right Amount of Chlorine

If your swimmers are suffering from eye irritation, you may have used too much chlorine. Finding out how much you need to add is relatively simple: simply enter your pool's dimensions into a pool volume calculator to find out how many gallons of water it holds.

Now, divide the volume by 100, and multiple that result by 0.013 to calculate the ounces of chlorine you need for your pool. So, if your pool has 60,000 gallons, you should end up needing about 7.8 ounces.

If you follow these guidelines, the prevalence of red eye in your pool should drop. However, if you have a serious problem with your filters or chlorine distribution system, call a pool repair service expert from a business like Guaranteed Pool Service & Repair as soon as possible.