What about other sanitizers? There're plenty of them. Good ones too, and poor ones with fancy promotions. (We call these "snake oil".) You'll learn about them all in Chapters 9, 13 and 17. We always seem to discuss chlorine first, as it's been the stand-by for years. As you begin to understand the principles of chlorine, the rest come easy.

We'll cover something called "water balance" too. It's a concept allowing us to adjust water so that it won't corrode and it won't scale. Chlorine is not a factor in water balance; pH, on the other hand, is the most important one.

Superchlorination is another vital topic in the AFO course. It is the process of raising chlorine levels high enough to eliminate unwanted, irritating compounds in the water. You'll find how urine (none in your pool of course), sweat and decomposing organic matter will actually combine with low levels of chlorine to produce these irritants, and how more chlorine yet, through superchlorination, will destroy them and actually get rid of eyeburn and odor.

So that's about it for your Prep School... No sense teaching the course before teaching the course. There's lots of fun stuff yet to go – such subjects as filtration, energy, safety, automation, maintenance, and management... but for now this introductory primer is all you really need.

PPOA Prep School :: Final Exam