Creative Water Solutions

Natural Water Treatment for Pools, Spas, and more

A local water park is said to be the only water park in the world using a revolutionary method to condition their water and it’s completely green.
Chaos water park in Eau Claire is using a fraction of the chemicals and chlorine they once used because PoolNaturally. A product made from Sphagnum moss that’s imported from New Zealand but the future of this water treatment system is a bit closer to home.

Click on the link for the full story: First water park in the world to use sphagnum moss to treat water

During the summer months, there’s nothing better for adults and kids alike than taking a dip in a nice, cool swimming pool, lake, or river. Summer is also when we head to the lake and rivers with our boats, jet skis, kayaks, etc.
Yet, as we know from recent events, water fun can swiftly become tragedy if some simple, basic safety rules aren’t observed. Make sure you and your family are water safe by following these safety policies:

BASIC WATER SAFETY
Learn to swim

The best thing anyone can do to stay safe in and around the water is to learn to swim. The American Red Cross has swimming courses for people of any age and swimming ability.
Learn CPR and insist that babysitters, grandparents, and others who care for your child know CPR. The American Red Cross and the Minnesota National Safety Council both offer CPR classes.
Never leave a child unobserved around water—any water, including pools, spas, bath tubs, etc. Adult eyes must be on children at all times when around water. The average child stays on the surface of the water for only 10 seconds and the drowning process can start after they are submerged within 20 seconds.
It takes as little as 2 inches of water and 2 minutes for a child to drown. Toilets and buckets of water can be deadly to toddlers, who are top-heavy and can fall over head first. If you have toddlers in your home, always keep the toilet seat down and never leave a bucket of water unattended.
Always swim with a buddy; never swim alone, even in your own pool.
Wear a lifejacket or PFD whenever possible, the Personal Floatation Device must be US Coastguard approved and fit properly.
Don’t swim if you’re under the influence of alcohol or other drugs.

POOL SAFETY

Make sure the depths of your pool are clearly marked. Teach children and other inexperienced or non-swimmers to stay in the shallow end.
Post CPR instructions in the pool area.
If you have a cordless (not cell) phone, keep it with you at the pool. If there is any pool emergency, call 911 IMMEDIATELY; then attempt rescue efforts.
Always keep basic lifesaving equipment by the pool and know how to use it. Pole, rope, and personal flotation devices are recommended.
Enclose the pool completely with a self-locking, self-closing fence with vertical bars. Openings in the fence should be no more than four inches wide. The house should not be included as a part of the barrier.
Pool covers should always be completely removed prior to pool use.
Consider installing an alarm that will sound if anyone or anything falls in the pool. Remember: A child can drown in less than two minutes.
Never leave furniture near the fence that would enable a child to climb over the fence.
Keep toys away from the pool when it is not in use. Toys can attract young children into the pool.
If a child is missing, check the pool first. Go to the edge of the pool and scan the entire pool, bottom, and surface, as well as the surrounding pool area. Keep your pool water sparkling clean so if someone is on the bottom, they can be seen.
Make sure your pool deck is made of or treated with slip-resistant materials.
In public swimming pools, always swim in areas supervised by a lifeguard and read and obey all rules and posted signs.

LAKE & RIVER SAFETY

Children or inexperienced swimmers should ALWAYS wear a US Coast Guard-approved personal floatation device/life jacket when around the water.
Watch out for the dangerous “too’s” – too tired, too cold, too far from safety, too much sun, too much strenuous activity.
Set water safety rules for the whole family based on swimming abilities (for example, inexperienced swimmers should stay in water less than chest deep).
Be knowledgeable of the water environment you are in and its potential hazards, such as deep and shallow areas, currents, depth charges, obstructions and where the entry and exit points are located. The more informed you are, the less likely you are to be injured or killed.
Use a feet-first entry when entering the water.

This last summer we added our Sphagnum moss pool product to the Highland Park Aquatic Center in St. Paul. We treated two pools. One was a 430,000 gallon Olympic pool and the other was a 22,500 gallon children’s activity pool. You can read about the results on our website.
One lesson we learned involved cyanuric acid, outdoor pools, and chlorine. The accepted dogma is that cyanuric acid is required for outdoor pools and spas to stabilize the chlorine against UV degradation. In fact, most granular or solid chlorine sold in stores is stabilized with cyanuric acid. Dichlor and Trichlor have cyanuric acid in the formula.

When cyanuric acid interferes with chlorine

We started to try and understand the chemistry and science of cyanuric acid because of its side effects. Cyanuric acid above a certain concentration (which is dependent on pH) inhibits chlorine’s (hypochlorous acid to be precise) ability to oxidize bacteria. Failure to oxidize means no killing.
We also found that cyanuric acid is denser than water so it sinks to the bottom of a body of water. Therefore, the level of cyanuric acid on the surface of the pool or spa is the lowest level in the pool and it increases from there to the bottom. It will be the highest in the deepest part of the pool.
We tested this at the Olympic-sized pool. We sampled water at the bottom, middle and top of the pool. The cyanuric acid was set for 40 ppm. At the surface the level was 30-40 ppm, in the middle it was 60-70 ppm and at the bottom it was 100 ppm. From the middle of the pool to the bottom hypochlorous acid was essentially ineffective.
The other fact about cyanuric is that it is nonvolatile. That means as you add more and more to your pool or spa the concentration continues to increase. The only way to decrease the concentration is to empty some water and replace it with fresh water without cyanuric acid so you dilute out the chemical. In places where the spa or pool is full all year long, the concentration of cyanuric acid can increase to the point where the pool has no effective chlorine. I think this is why most pools have algae outbreaks starting in the bottom of the pool. The high cyanuric acid levels inhibit hypochlorous acid so no killing of algae occurs.

The experiment

So, after we learned this, I decided to decrease the cyanuric acid level in the pools gradually to see if it is really needed. The pool engineers told me “if you do that there will be no free chlorine in this pool in the morning.” We agreed to decrease cyanuric acid by 10 ppm each week and monitor the results. The free chlorine levels never decreased and the combined chlorine remained at 0. We decreased the cyanuric acid to zero and never added any more for the rest of the summer. The levels slowly decreased to zero as makeup water diluted out the cyanuric acid. The children’s activity pool behaved exactly the same.
In another pool we treated we were able to manage the large pool all summer without any cyanuric acid and maintained free chlorine levels from 1-3 ppm with no combined chlorine all summer.

Water treated with moss doesn’t need cyanuric acid

The bottom line is that with moss treated water, cyanuric acid is not needed. The mechanism for this probably centers around organic contamination. I don’t think that cyanuric acid prevents chlorine from UV degradation or the free chlorine levels would have decreased in the outdoor pools we treated. We know the moss inhibits organic contamination formation in the laboratory and know that organic contamination absorbs chlorine. We know that free chlorine levels skyrocket when moss is added to the pool and to maintain a level of 1-3 ppm free chlorine, the chlorine added to the pool decreases by over half. So a pool with moss doesn’t need cyanuric acid. That allows the chlorine added to the pool to remain active providing effective microbial control.