Chlorine Shortages

How are you loving this Summer heat?

If you’re tired of sweating it out in this drought, perhaps you’ve considered taking a swim to cool off, I know I have, but the Summer of 2021 has become somewhat inconvenient for a lot of reasons. One of those reasons, as you should well know by now, are shortages.

Unfortunately, these shortages are now impacting our personal and commercial swimming pools.

That’s right, we are short on chlorine now.

Lets discuss how this could possibly affect your Summer fun in our 55+ communities here in Utah.

Will I Be Able To Swim?

HOA pools for Leisure Villas

One of most crucial elements in our swimming pools is chlorine. We have to maintain a specific balance to keep the pools clean and safe. Its so important, that the County Health Department actually needs to send inspectors weekly to test the pool and make sure that it is within tolerances.

The problem our 55+ communities are facing now with our clubhouse pools, is that chlorine is running short.

A few months ago, granular and caked chlorine was experiencing a shortage across the country, but liquid chlorine was still in good supply. Now, however, the liquid chlorine market has experienced a major shortage. In fact, supply houses here in Utah are completely out!

Luckily for most of Leisure Villas active adult communities, we have hired a swimming pool manager to maintain our swimming pools, and this manager foresaw some of these shortages and did his best to prepare in advance.

He did however talk to me the other day, and warned that if liquid chlorine stocks do not improve, then there is a very likely chance in the coming weeks and months, that our community pools will need to be shut down temporarily.

This is not what any of us wants to hear, but for the last year and a half, that seems to be the sort of news we all keep hearing.

What can be done?

While there is very little that can be done to improve the chlorine stocks in the short term, there are some measures we can take to keep our current supplies of chlorine from running out as quickly. One of these is to keep the pool cover closed when the pool is not in use.

When the pool cover is open, and the pool is exposed to the sun and air, it evaporates the chlorine out much quicker than if it was covered.

Another thing we can do, is to make sure we take those showers before entering the pool. Chlorine reacts to biological contaminants, and so if the chlorine is getting spent cleaning all the filth on your bodies, then it requires more chlorine to keep the water sanitary. So don’t skip that part!

We all want to enjoy our swimming pools while the swimming season lasts, and in these high temperatures, the pool makes the most sense for cooling off from the heat of the day. But as the coming weeks approach, you may see some temporary shutdowns in your swimming pools. There isn’t much that can be done about this until the chlorine shortages rebound, so if it does come down to closing our pools, we ask you to be patient while our pool managers scramble to keep your pools open as best they can.