AUSTINTOWN, Ohio (WKBN) – Pool owners are ready to dive into summer, but some are having trouble finding an essential product: chlorine.

The pool season is cloudy for some people. A shortage of chlorine is impacting when they might be able to have their water ready.

“It’s just not going to be enough for everyone,” said Bobby Ballone, general manager of Austintown Pools & Spas.

Ballone knows the 50-pound buckets of chlorine tablets are hard to find. He’s getting irregular shipments of them and the price is up 40 percent. They’re needed for pools and hot tubs, above ground or in-ground.

Some people will substitute liquid chlorine, which is harder to use but cheaper and in greater supply.

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Ballone has been pushing a mineral chlorine system for years.

“It’s more of a less maintenance, easier system to use, a little less application of the tablets themselves. You use about 50 percent less chlorine than what you normally do in a regular chlorine tablet pool,” he said.

Memorial Day week is the time people start to open their pools and there’s a scramble for chemicals. The 3-inch hockey puck like tablets are in short supply but there are alternatives.

“There are going to be ways around it as far as liquid chlorine, even just overshocking with chlorinated shock. Different ways to raise that chlorine level and still have the pool sanitized and make it work that way,” Ballone said.

For chlorine users, shortages are expected to continue and experts believe prices will stay high through the end of the summer.