Category

Swimming Pool Chemicals

PoolStore is the UK’s favourite on-line supplier of swimming pool chemicals.

If you know what chemicals you need click on the buttons above or the links on the left to see our range categorised by type of chemical. 

Chlorine is the number one chemical treatment for sanitising a swimming pool. It kills bacteria and algae that get in to your swimming pool’s water. Chlorine comes in two formats - granular and in tablets. You dose your pool with chlorine granules usually by scattering them on to the surface of the water, chlorine tablets are placed in your skimmer basket where they slowly dissolve over a week. Chlorine can be stabilised or un-stabilised. Un-stabilised chlorine is known as shock chlorine.

Algicides are added to your water solely to kill algae, they have no effect on any bacteria in the water. There are two forms of algicides – longlife and regular. Long life algicides  are a one off water treatment. You usually give your water one dose in the spring to see you through the swimming season. You can also get winterising algicide to dose your pool over winter. Long life algicides mostly contain copper. Some people do not want to put copper in their water. Regular algicide contains no copper but you have to remember to dose your water every two weeks. It is very important to keep your swimming pool water at the right acidity level. This is known as keeping the right balance or pH balance in your water. Acids and alkalis are the chemical you use to achieve this. Dose rates for these chemicals can be quite high so always make sure you have enough.

It is very common to get very small particles in your water that are just to small to be picked up by the swimming pool’s filter. They make your water look cloudy but it is still safe to swim in. Clarifiers   are a special chemical used to gather the small particles together to coagulate them into bigger particles so the filter can collect them. This is also known as flocculation so the chemicals used are sometimes abbreviated to “floc”. Floc tablets and granules are aluminium sulphate. Other water clarifiers are in liquid form and known as cationic liquid clarifiers.

Its no good putting chemicals in your swimming pool water if you don’t how much you have dosed it that is why testing your water is important. Test kits come in many types. The simplest type of swimming pool test kit is the test strip. Just swill it around in your pool water and the colour change tells you the levels of chlorine and pH. Comparator test kits involve taking a sample of the water and dropping a DPD tablet and a Phenol Red tablet in to the water. The colour change indicates the chemical levels.

Please visit our Help and Advice Section for lots more articles on swimming pool chemicals including non-chlorine alternatives.