ORP, What is it and Should I Test for it in my Pool?
What is ORP? ORP stands for oxidation-reduction potential and it basically measures the effectiveness of the sanitizer (usually Chlorine) in your swimming pool. ORP can also be used for Bromine and Ozone as well as other Oxidizing sanitizers. ORP is widely used in Eurpoe as the standard for safety in swimming pools. The US is slow to adopt this standard and still use PPM of Free Chlorine as the standard. ORP is a proven method of safety in water and has a long track record dating back over 40 years. So do you need to test for it? It depends. If you are a pool service professional you should test for ORP at your commercial accounts and some heavily used residential accounts. If you are a homeowner and want to be 100% certain your pool is safe to swim in, then getting an ORP tester is not a bad idea. You can basically keep your sanitizer effective by keeping a Free Chlorine level of 2-3 ppm, keeping the pH at 7.2-7.6 and having your Cyanuric Acid (Conditioner) at 30 ppm to 1...