Could my pool water be damaging my pool?

If your calcium hardness is not at the proper level, your water can absolutely damage your pool. First, what is calcium hardness? Calcium hardness is the calcium portion of the amount of minerals in your pool water. Calcium ultimately determines hardness or softness of the water.

If your calcium hardness level is too high (also called hard water), this can leave calcium deposits on your pool walls, on your waterline tile, and any rails you have going into the pool. This can also cause your pool water to become cloudy. If your calcium hardness level is too low (also called soft water), this will cause the water to try to find calcium where it can: your pool walls. If your water is pulling calcium from your pool walls, this can cause cracking and severe damage to the pool itself. Soft water can also corrode any railings you have going into the pool.

There are a few ways to fix water hardness problems. First: Hire a professional pool service to chemically test your pool water and determine the root cause of the issue. If your water is too hard, it is recommended you drain some of your pool water and replace it with fresh water. It’s a good idea to also test your water source to make sure it’s not adding too much calcium to your pool water as well. You can also add muriatic acid to the pool water. This won’t actually remove calcium from your water, but it will help to bring your pool water back into balance. If your water is cloudy and the cause is calcium, this means there are undissolved calcium particles in your water and a pool flocculant can be used to bind those molecules together and sink them to the bottom of your pool at which point you can slowly and carefully vacuum them out. Luckily, fixing soft water is much easier. It’s as simple as adding hardness increaser to your pool water.