Calcium Hardness is one of those chemicals that I call an “Investment Chemical” meaning that by adding it to your swimming pool you are protecting your investment which is your swimming pool. What this chemical does is harden the water so that your water doesn’t penetrate the walls of your pool and slowly eat away at your vinyl liner or concrete walls. Soft water is known to do this and by adding this chemical you are preventing that from happening. With that being said there are different doses depending on which type of swimming pool you have. Also you should note that the one positive besides protecting your swimming pool is that you only need to add it once a year if enough is added at the beginning.
If you have a vinyl liner above ground pool or an inground pool then your know that your liner is important because it what holds the water in. And replacing a vinyl liner can be expensive so you want to make sure you keep your liner it good care so that day doesn’t come too soon. With a vinyl liner swimming pool you only need to keep your calcium hardness level at 175ppm to 225ppm (parts per million). If you have a concrete or white plaster inground swimming pool then you need to keep your level at 225ppm to 250ppm. You want to keep this right in this range because if your calcium hardness level is too high cause scaling from calcium deposits. To better explain this it means your water has too much and tries to get rid of some by leaving it on your liner, pipes, hoses or your filter system.
When adding this chemical you need to keep in mind that it gets really hot when it comes in contact with water and if you don’t pre-dissolve it will sit on the bottom of the swimming pool because it takes quite a long time to dissolve in water. So I will always recommend that you should pre-dissolve calcium hardness before adding it to a vinyl liner swimming pool. If you have a concrete pool it will be ok to add directly to the pool as is. But if you do decide to pre-dissolve then I would advise you be careful and wear goggles and gloves.
Note: Really when adding any type of chemical to a swimming pool you should wear goggles and gloves.
