Everybody has been there, it’s late in the day, you are about to go home. You may even be packing your things up, and then it happens, the “Code Brown” rings out and you need to deal with it.
You put down your stuff, and head for the chemical storage closet and for those who never dealt with ‘code brown’, this is where the questions set in. You know you need to shock, but by how much? What chemical do you use? How much of it do you need? How long must your pool be shut down?
These are all important questions and are things that you should either know off hand, or have ready access to.
But what if you are not there? Maybe it’s just after you’ve left and you get a phone call.
A fecal incident response card can help, this card should include how much of each type of chemical is needed to increase by 1ppm, or reduce by 1ppm, it should also include how much of a shock is needed for the different biological incidents as well as how long the pool must remain at the elevated level before the chlorine can be brought down and/or the pool can be reopened.
This speeds up response by guard staff who do not need to wait for direction from the operator, it also helps prevent over/under chlorinating in the event of an incident when people just “throw some in”.
Every pool and spa is different, so the card should be filled out for the exact amount of gallons for that body of water, with multiple cards for a multi-pool facility.
For more information on fecal incident response from the CDC you can read it here.
*Below (Example of an aquatic response card, each amount would be calculated and entered. Where multiple types of chlorine are on hand, each should have the amounts calculated and added.)
