I’m Deb Kowalski in Port St. Lucie, and as of mid-September 2026, the pool is still part of the household routine. When the water looks cloudy, my old reflex was to add chlorine. I used to think of cloudiness as a request for more sanitizer: the water looks wrong, so pour in the thing that makes pool water safe.
Here in Florida, that reflex is easy to understand. But cloudy water is something you can see; chlorine concentration and pH are things you have to measure. The pool does not print its test results on the surface. Adding chlorine before checking the water skips the part that tells you whether chlorine is low in the first place.
Next stepIf your pool water looks cloudy, ask a local pool pro to address the cloudiness.Describe cloudy water→Free · Your number stays private
What the CDC says
The CDC puts the other measurement plainly: “As pH goes up, the ability of chlorine to kill germs decreases, especially if pH is >8.0.” Its home-pool guidance calls for testing both chlorine concentration and pH. Its pool-safety guidance says to check both at least twice per day, and more often during heavy use. That is a different routine from treating every cloudy patch as an instruction to add chlorine…