Lowering CYA Levels In Your Swimming Pool
Have you ever walked into a pool store and they told you your CYA levels were too high and you needed to drain your swimming pool? if you use chlorine tabs in your swimming pool, be prepared for this but instead of draining your swimming pool we ask that you utilize our service first!
So, what is Cyanuric Acid (CYA)?
CYA is also known as stabilizer/conditioner for your swimming pool and it is a chemical that is necessary to help retain chlorine in your swimming pool. In this blog post, we want to highlight what CYA is, what it does, and what you should do when the levels get too high! Please note, most pool professionals in the industry will recommend draining your swimming pool and starting over but at Foothills Poolwater Revival, we don’t agree with that and want to show you why recycling your swimming pool water with our Reverse Osmosis (RO) mobile filtration is a much better solution.
When you are concerned about chlorine loss, one of the most common chemicals used is CYA. The conditioner protects the free chlorine from being destroyed by the ultraviolet rays of the sun. CYA is known as a stabilizer for the chlorine in swimming pools exposed to sunlight. It helps reduce the chlorine loss by protecting the free chlorine in the pool from the sun’s ultraviolet rays, which in turn reduces the amount of chlorine needed to maintain proper sanitizer levels. Because of this, cyanuric acid can help reduce the cost of maintaining a safe and clean swimming pool. Depending on whether or not you have a salt system, the normal ranges for CYA in your swimming pool is 50 to 80 parts per million (ppm). But, what happens when those levels are higher than 80-100ppm? The biggest issue would be the effectiveness of the chlorine to act as a disinfectant in your pool. When you have higher levels of CYA it will actually bind with the chlorine, making it slower to kill bacteria and other microorganisms and prevent algae from growing. Higher levels will also increase cloudiness in the pool water; making it very susceptible to algae growth. It could also increase the amount of chlorine you will need to use to keep it clear and free of algae growth. Typically when this happens, it can be a head scratcher for most pool owners unless you change out the water!
At this point, you can either choose to drain and refill your swimming pool which we don’t recommend or use our mobile filtration trailer that comes to your residential or commercial swimming pool and recycles the water onsite. It’s equipped with Reverse Osmosis (RO) filtration that lowers Calcium Hardness (CH), Total Dissolved Solids (TDS), and Cyanuric Acid (CYA) without draining the swimming pool. The filtered swimming pool water that returns to the swimming pool is drinkable water, which means it is the best water possible for your pool. By using our service, we can also conserve up to 85% of the existing water in the swimming pool, we never expose the interior finish and you can actually swim in the pool while the process is being performed!