Owning a swimming pool is a popular luxury many families love to have. Many find it refreshing to swim and float in their own private swimming area, kids especially love splashing around on the hotter days of the year – sometimes they can’t resist even the colder days!
Ever thought about how much water is lost or evaporates from your swimming pool? This article is intended to help you understand the ways in which your swimming pool loses water as well as ways to measure water evaporation.
Water Loss Through Evaporation
There are several factors that can affect the amount of water your swimming pool loses. Evaporation is the number one cause of water loss. The rate of water evaporation varies depending upon location, temperature, humidity and wind, but it isn’t uncommon for an uncovered swimming pool to lose 5mm of water per day on average.
The most accurate way to determine how much water your pool loses through evaporation is with a bucket test. That is, fill a reasonably sized bucket with water from your pool, mark the water level on the inside of bucket, and after 24 hours mark the new water level. Do this over several days, hopefully it won’t rain, and then take an average. Note, during the summer period you will lose a lot more water through evaporation, possibly as much as double that of winter.
Reducing Water Evaporation
You can greatly reduce water evaporation from your swimming pool by creating
wind blocks – using solid fence enclosure, large rocks around your pool, and shrubbery all help to break the wind.
Pool covers greatly reduce water evaporation to almost nil, and as such are sometimes required by councils if you own a pool. That said, owning one doesn’t mean it will be always used for several reasons:
- pool covers can be a hassle to constantly remove and put back on
- pool covers keep water at much higher temperature, which may not be particularly refreshing on a hot summer day.
- higher water temperatures can result in an algae bloom, especially if your pool water isn’t chemically balanced. (If this happens to you, trust me, it leads to pool cover anxiety!)
Other Ways Pool Water is Lost
There are many other ways water is lost from your swimming pool other than evaporation. Other common areas of water loss include:
- Swimming and diving (especially those bomb dives!) causing water to splash out, but this can be mitigated with perimeter recirculation systems – gutters around the edge of your pool which re-captures water that splashes out.
- Backwashing, the filter attached to your swimming pool needs backwashing every so often to clean it out, causing 100s of litres of water to be pumped down the drain.
- Water leaks – the structural integrity of your swimming pool might fail, or sometimes pipes, connections to your water pump or filter can start to leak water.
A common benefit for homeowners investing in a water tank is easy top up of your swimming pool water. Some locations with water restrictions in place, will not allow you to make use of your mains water for topping up, unless certain water efficiency requirements are met. One of these, is owning a rainwater tank plumbed into your home.
National Poly Industries provide a range of rainwater tanks to suit all sorts of situations. Our water tanks are certified to
Australian Standards, make use of food-grade polyethylene and come with
SUPA-UV protection. We aim to provide very competitive prices, so if you’re in need of a high-quality tank don’t hesitate to request a quote.