Among the many spa maintenance tasks that we do, understanding how to reduce water hardness in spa shop sydney is one of the most important. Allowing the water hardness or calcium level in your pool spa equipment to become too high or too low could be detrimental to the water’s chemistry balance.
There are even instances that it can harm or induce a damaging effect on your pool equipment and its various components. For this reason, it is of paramount importance that you know exactly how to maintain proper balance in this aspect and be very good at it.
What is Calcium in Relation to Your Pool Equipment?
We have a straightforward answer to this — your pool equipment contains water. Remember that calcium is an element and that it naturally occurs in all bodies of water. This would include rivers to creeks, up to the oceans.
Even the tap water that flows out of our household faucet has calcium in it since it originally comes from the big bodies of water like streams, rivers, aquifers, and the earth.
Calcium and magnesium are minerals that can be found in both of those sources. Over time, they get to the bodies of water and thus get dissolved along the way.
These dissolved minerals in the water itself cause the water to become “hard.” But you can make your water softener or you can also make it harder compared to water in other areas, depending on where you’re from.
If you are not certain as to the hardness of the water coming out of the faucet in your own home, you can purchase a water hardness test kit for this purpose.
Is the Hardness of Water and the Hardness of Calcium the Same Thing?
For this, we are going to give you another direct answer. Water hardness and calcium hardness are terms that can be interchanged with one another. Therefore, they are the same banana. But there is one new term that we need to get familiar with first: absolute hardness.
What is Total Hardness?
When you say complete hardness, you are referring to the concentration of magnesium and calcium that has been dissolved in water.
You may ask, Why is this important? To be sure, there are water test strips and kits that can measure not just calcium hardness but even its complete hardness, too.
While it is not a big deal, you can determine exactly just how much magnesium and calcium make up your Australian plunge pool water has. There is no need to do this though, it is enough to balance your pool water calcium levels with respect to its total hardness.
Too Much Calcium
If you reside in a place where the use of hard water is not considered something unusual, then you know what scaling is all about. You have seen that on your faucets. You’ve probably noticed it accumulating on your kitchen tiles and sink. There is no exemption to that because even your shower head is not spared by scaling due to hard water.
This goes to show that if your pool equipment water calcium level gets too high, your pool equipment is going to be covered with scales. It will be too visible in the filter, and you will likely see some formations also in various crannies and nooks.
Do you know what is scarier here, and perhaps even more dangerous is the scaling that is not seen by the naked eyes, or those that are hidden from sight itself. If that happens, the repercussions would manifest in the form of damage to your pool equipment filter system.
Too Little Calcium
If calcium levels are too low, it will run the risk of inducing premature corrosion to your pool equipment and its parts. This includes the heating element of the heater itself, the jets, and significant sections of the pool shell (in the case of hot tubs).
If you are using water for your pool equipment that is too “soft”, it can become a bane to your water, causing it to produce the so-called “hot tub foam”. It is pretty obvious to see that it is indeed a double whammy thing.
Conclusion
To experience the benefits of using only the optimum quality for your Australian plunge pool water, see to it that you have a calcium range of 175 to 250 ppm (parts per million).
This is also relevant for complete hardness. Provided that your pool water chemistry will stay within that ideal range, your pool equipment water should be fine and suitable for every household member’s swimming pleasure.