With in the market today consumers have many choices of the routes they can follow when it comes to treating their pool water. The only problem with this is that many consumers are not educated in the facts of pool treatments and do not understand that some pool treatment methods are actually harmful or carry increased health risks with use over time.

There are various items you need to maintain in you're a healthy swimming environment inside your pool. With the various ways that you can treat your pool water how does a consumer know which is the best, safest, most reliable and cost effective? Below you will find a guide with some of the different types of pool water treatments to help you understand exactly the types of pool water treatments and some of the dangers of others.

Out of all the pool water treatments chlorine is one of the unsafe methods of treating your pool. Chlorine has been linked to an increased rate of bladder and rectal cancers among adults. It has also been linked to children's asthma in recent studies and research. Chlorine has harmful vapors that when breathed can lead to respiratory problems. Chlorine also dries out the skin, hair and causes burning to people's eyes. Chlorine needs to be used at exact calculations for specify water capacities of each pool. Most people do not follow these exact calculations causing either not enough chlorine to enter the pool which can lead to an unclean pool or to much chlorine which can then cause health risks.

Bromine an alternative to chlorine is not a suitable choice for pools as it more stable at higher temperatures which makes it a more suitable for spas. Bromine works the same as chlorine but the cost is very high.

Ultra Violet pool water treatments are usually very costly and sometimes require the use of other chemicals. This system works better for small pools or spas due to the way they work. The water is passed through a chamber where an ultra violet light is used to kill bacteria. With this method, bacteria are only killed with in the chamber. To efficiently clean your entire pool the pools pump would have to run non stop.

Mineral cartridges work in a way similar to the Ultra Violet system. Water passes through the cartridge killing off bacteria. The downside to these products is that your pool pump must be running at all times to maintain a clean pool. Also like the above named system these types of pool treatments will not eliminate the need for chemicals like chlorine to be used in your pool.

Biaguanide chemicals better know as Baquacil and Soft Swim products are an alternative to chlorine products. While these products do not have the safety issues as chlorine they are very costly sometimes costing more then three times the average cost of chlorine. Biaguanide chemicals also need to be manually added to your pool water.

Salt systems mainly turn the salt into chlorine which brings you back to the chlorine issues at hand.

Salt systems use a salt generator to turn the salt into chlorine. A salt system is also expensive to start up and will require that the cells be replaced. These cells are also not a cheap expense.

I have tried taking water out of the spa so the water level could be below the pool, but then the pool starter draining to the spa, until they both reached the same level!

There are no leaks, and i have tried closing and opening all the valves that control the pool, i have tried filling the spa with water, but then the spa drains to the pool until they reach the same water level, even with the pump completely shut down.

I don't know what to do, and it wasn't like this before... the water from the spa used to be much higher than the pool water level.

Anyone knows how to fix this? I don't wanna spend any money right now, so if anyone that know about pools has any ideas, i would appreciate it!

the only valves that control my pool, are: spa drain, main drain, skimmer, floor system, spa spillover!
*here's also a valve that control a jet on the side of the pool!

*sry about the misspellings!