Since much of California is on fire right now maybe others have seen it: Despite proper filtration, chlorine level and pH our pool develops algae. We are more or less in thick smoke for about three weeks now, never had it that long and bad before. Google didn't reveal much but is it normal to get a lot more algea growth even though the sun barely shines through the haze (it's dark orange most days)?
Anyhow, if you have a pool and live in smoky parts of CA keep an eye on it.
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That smoke is probably great fertilizer, and may also consume the active part of the chlorine. So I'm not surprised.
What does your local pool supply house say?
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Algae growth depends on quite a few factors, including the availability of critical nutrients (e.g. the classic NPK triple of nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium).
Wood ash contains potassium and some phosphorus.
I live in Silicon Valley, and there have been a couple of days during the recent fires when there have been enough fluffy ashes falling to be visible on our cars. There's probably quite a bit more ash falling in smaller smoke particles which are not discretely visible.
I wonder whether there might be enough ashfall taking place to add a significant amount of some critical nutrient to your pool (and mine!), thus promoting algae growth. Some reports on Lake Tahoe clarity I've read, indicate that studies have show that as much as half of the nitrogen in the lake, and a third of the phosphorus, got their via the air rather than through other channels (e.g. rainwater runoff).
There's a commercial algae-preventive treatment on the market for swimming pools called NoPhos - it's apparently based on a lanthanum compound (possibly the carbonate?) which binds to, and helps precipitate out phosphate in the water. Since plant growth is limited by the amount of the least-available critical element, stripping the phosphate out of the water can reduce algae growth significantly.
It does seem to work. One local pool supplier advertises that if you treat your pool water with it according to their directions, and still have an algae problem, they'll provide the chemicals needed to kill the algae (via shock chlorination I assume) at no charge.
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Haven't called them. I'll have to clean out the DE filter now. Of course this happened exactly at the right time, after a client called in an emergency. Murphy's law, I guess.
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What color is the algae? Green, or redish? I remember something about chlorophyll 'd' (the 4th to be discovered) absorbs in the infrared. It's found in some red algae. Also, the absorption peaks of Chlorophyll 'a' (the usual one folks mean) are at 665nm and 465nm. Might be interesting to set up a cheap spectrophotometer to look at the bands around there. I built one from some card stock (heavy paper) and a DVD-RW disk and calibrated it for wavelengths with an $8 mercury-argon bulb. Costs almost nothing these days to do and took me less than an hour's time. I'd be happy to send my template (it's in PDF form) for the card stock paper, if you want it.
Jon
[...] [...]
Ash might be good fertilizer, if much of that is coming down, but I doubt that atmospheric smoke has any measurable fertilizing effect on pool water. From a couple of refs[1] I think that smoke suppresses UV somewhat, while decreasing IR relatively little. Smoke aerosols apparently act differently than ordinary clouds. Algae are suppressed somewhat by UV; you can buy "UV clarifiers" to hold down algae growth.[2] Anyhow, I attribute the increased algae growth to decreased UV without decreased IR.
-jiw
[1]
How about the pH also? The ash may be driving the pH up into the growth range for the algae.
When did you last do a complete water change? Check your alkalinity... it's different than pH.
...Jim Thompson
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Thanks. I've been looking for a cheap source of lanthanum for my radioactive carrier chemistry experiments. Any chance it's lanthanum floride?
Here's an article on algae growth promotion by fly ash:
I haven't read it and probably wouldn't undestand it anyway.
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It's yellow/green.
-- Regards, Joerg http://www.analogconsultants.com/ "gmail" domain blocked because of excessive spam. Use another domain or send PM.
Thanks. I am filtering the heck out of it right now and tonight will repack the filter with some fresh DE. Problem is, sometimes you cough your lungs out if outdoors around here these days.
-- Regards, Joerg http://www.analogconsultants.com/ "gmail" domain blocked because of excessive spam. Use another domain or send PM.
It was normal a couple days ago but I'll measure again tonight.
-- Regards, Joerg http://www.analogconsultants.com/ "gmail" domain blocked because of excessive spam. Use another domain or send PM.
Just a word of caution: Nothing is cheap in a pool store ;-)
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I'll measure all that tonight, last time it was ok. Complete water changes are quite impossible here. Unless your name is Rockefeller _and_ you won the lottery. Or if you have your own well but then the electric utility will have you over the barrel.
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The MSDS says "Lanthanum chloride heptahydrate".
-- Dave Platt AE6EO Friends of Jade Warrior home page:
Interested in trying your hand at a simple spectrophotometer? Might be fun.
Jon
Can you readily find replacement pool lamp bulbs (12V, 300W or somesuch?) other than at a pool store? I remember replacing the one at my grandparent's house and -- while we were short on time -- I do recall calling a couple of regular electrical supplie houses without success. (I wouldn't have had time to mail order...)
Interested, yes. Time, no. In fact, I've got to help push a professional spectrometer through EMC right now. Maybe I'll bring some of our pool water :-)
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Much of the pool stuff is under strictly guarded price controls. By the manufacturers, of course. Meaning you are forced to fork over $30 for a piece of Chinese plastic that cost maybe 50c in production. Lamps, I don't know, but in the German NG de.sci.electronics we recently had a discussion where somebody built one from power-LEDs in three colors. So he could use less power and program some dazzling light shows. Oh, if I just had more time ...
-- Regards, Joerg http://www.analogconsultants.com/ "gmail" domain blocked because of excessive spam. Use another domain or send PM.
Yeah, I hear you. They've declared "Spare the Air" days, which is when I'd want to avoid driving to work... but the air is so awful that I'm not willing to ride my bike (11 miles each way).
Oh... interesting note when it comes to pool chemistry and the "nothing is cheap in a pool store" issue. A couple of years ago I noticed some products at Leslie's called "Yellow Out" and "Green Out" which are advertised as high-potency algae eliminators. The instructions for use add up to "Shift your pool's PH to highly alkaline, superchlorinate, add this stuff, wait twelve hours, superchlorinate again, re-balance the PH."
Further reading and study was informative.
They're actually exactly the same product - just labeled differently (priced the same). The chemical in this product is a source of ammonium ion... when added to highly chlorinated water in the right ratio, the ammonium binds to the chlorine, leaving you with little or no free chlorine or ammonium but with a huge amount of chloramine in the water (the same stuff that one normally shock-chlorinates to get rid of!).
It seems that chloramines are more effective at killing and bleaching-out algae than chlorine alone is, and will kill even many chlorine-resistant algae and bacteria.
At the end of the treatment period, additional heavy chlorination is used to break up and oxidize away the chloramines and restore the normal levels of free chlorine in the water.
The actual chemical being sold is a complex ammonium salt of some sort (I forget the exact name), and is sold for around $20 for one pool treatment's worth. I looked up the original patent, and learned that the process was originally developed using either liquid ammonium hydroxide, or pelleted urea... and the amount of urea needed to produce the required amount of chloramine could probably be purchased at a garden/feed store for a dollar or two.
The one "gotcha" about this whole idea I'm not really sure of, is what happens to the bound-up ammonium ion in the final step. If it ends up being broken down all the way to nitrogen (plus other gasses) it wouldn't be a problem. However, if it's not completely oxidized, it seems to me that a bunch of it could be left in the water as nitrate... and that would tend to promote a regrowth of algae. Possibly a shock-oxidation with sodium persulphate might be a good idea (and this would tend to help bring the pool pH back from its artificially-induced high values to a more neutral level).
--
Dave Platt AE6EO
Friends of Jade Warrior home page: http://www.radagast.org/jade-warrior
I do _not_ wish to receive unsolicited commercial email, and I will
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