Sports Realm

With respect to public swimming pools, the United States may be able to learn much from Europe, Australia and Canada. Current legislative trends in the U.S., as evidenced by law changes in California and Florida, are bucking thoughtful policy in these other parts of the world. Recent changes to state law permit swimming in public pools with as high as 50 full parts chlorine. European standards require pools to be closed when total chlorine exceeds as little as 1.5ppm. Further, the European standard permits a 5ppm minimum chlorine level when combined with .4ppm. Jeff Grotte , a chief mechanical officer in the water treatment industry, notes that the European standard goes further in mandating that daily bather loads are counted and water exchange rates are maintained at a rate of 35 liters per swimmer , per day. Under the standard, pools must be closed when maximum daily bather loads are exceeded.

“Americans have been unwilling to regulate total swimmers per day and most states require a 5% water exchange daily, even with few swimmers,” says Grotte. The Europeans recognized human health issues with chloramines in the 1990’s and additionally recognized that the daily bather load and the 1 BILLION skin cells and one quart of uric acid per swimmer were the public safety and water treatment challenges. “We simply won’t sell our product to a public swimming pool that will not count swimmers. We insist on that along with the already required daily water testing,” Grotte continued.

One solution for commercial swimming pools with high bather loads is to install filters with glass media. Glass media is able to two micron filtration, a great tool against human skin cells and ECOLI microbes which average nine microns in size. Moreover, this happens to be an area where U.S. regulations and common protocol happen to be world-class. A combination of filter bed depth and pump flow requirements ensure that the glass media will achieve the effective two to five micron filtration level required for first-pass filtering of bacteria and human skin cells, according to Grotte.

The addition of oxygen may also play an important role as it prevents the chlorine from combinating. Globally, a commercial swimming pool system has been made available, to sites willing to install glass media filtration, that combine natural oxygen, ionic copper and CO2, pH control systems. If a reliable acid feeder and accurate pH sensors are already in place, the CO2 system is optional.

The O2 oxygen is delivered at 40 grams per minute, per cell and multiple cells can outperform even the largest Ozone generators available. The O2 does a very efficient job of dealing with uric acid and body oils, and delivers free chlorine numbers equal to total chlorine, automated by a ppm sensor.

ECOsmarte has non-salt, non-chemical water technology installed in all 50 US states & 100 countries. ECOsmarte’s commercial pool systems with Residual Bacteria Control have roots in NASA.