Swimming pool water in soil

16 years ago

I just created a planting area around my swimming pool. We added new soil. Then my swimming pool overflowed and flooded the new soil before we did any planting. A lot of water went into the soil.

How dangerous is this flooding? I believe that it is mainly chlorine in the pool water? Can I neutralize the chlorine, or do I need to replace the soil which would be very tedious and expensive? If I have to replace the soil, how deep do I need to dig out the old soil?

I would appreciate any advice on this.

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Comments (6)

Kimmsr
16 years ago
What came out of the pool was water with some form of chlorine added, probably less than 10 percent and after some time the soil will repair itself. Adding more organic matter can help speed that up, but I'd not spend the time, energy, and money to replace the soil that is there.
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squonnk
16 years ago
I agree with kimmsr. Chlorine and chloride react very quickly and readily to so much stuff. Organic matter neutralizes chlorine/chloride very quickly. Even if you do end up with a little bit of an elevated chloride level in the soil, it should readily leach out of the root zone with a few thorough irrigations.
One thing I would be sure of though is to choose plants for that area that are not sensitive to chloride and salts since, being so close to the pool, there is a chance that they will get splashed, which can burn the leaves of sensitive plants.
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curtludwig
16 years ago
Chlorine outgasses too I believe so it shouldn't be too dangerous. If it were really dangerous how much would you want to swim in it.

A friend treats his pool with a form of hydrogen peroxide. In that case the same is true because hydrogen peroxide H203 wants to turn into water H20 and oxygen O2, ie it outgasses oxygen and the rest turns into water...
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squonnk
16 years ago
That's another good point.
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bob64
16 years ago
Doesn't sound like such a big disaster in the long run. It's my understanding that chlorine does get airborn easily so much of it is probably long gone. Indeed, chlorine's ability to get airborn is one of the things that makes larger concentrations of chlorine a safety issue such as when a tanker crashes or whatever. A lot of "compost tea" instructions say to let chlorinated tap water offgas for a while before using so at least in that level of concentration it should be possible to easily dissipate the stuff. I speculate that airing out your soil might help speed up the healing (if it hasn't all offgassed already) together with some rain. The bigger issue is that water will inevitably find its way out of your pool again so you might want to either go with cheap plants or chlorine-tolerant plants or some sort of measure that keeps the pool overflow from saturating your planting area next time around. I further speculate that compost might help since it seems to help with everything but baldness.
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Lloyd
16 years ago
"about the freaking ÂFood WebÂ and the same diatribe that I have read 100 times on how compost is the cure all for everything from high pH and low pH, to any deficient or excessive nutrient, to locust, heat, cold, drought, flood, tornadoes, hair loss, scabies, receding glaciers, and oppression of the Tibetans."

I knew I read somebody had posted about baldness, (bold is mine) LOL

Lloyd
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Swimming pool water in soil

Comments (6)

Kimmsr

squonnk

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