I just did a stain treament (for iron) on sunday and the stains are gone. i went and got my water tested today and my chemicals are:

Fc 0
Cc 0.20
Ph 7.4
Alk 63


i heard if you raise your Ph then the stains will start to apear again. how can i raise my alk. without raising my Ph.... will baking soda raise my ph a lot?

Baking soda will not raise pH by much.

The pool calculator has an "Effects of adding chemicals" section which is handy for these types of questions.

How much are you looking to raise your TA?

Adding 48oz of baking soda will raise your TA by 16 and your pH by only .03. That'd bring yur TA to 79 and your pH to 7.43. I'm not sure that's going to be much of a problem.

I do not really see much of a need for you to raise your TA right now... At least not for the sake of hitting any particular number.

That said, you do want to keep your pH low for awhile, and you MAY be having some difficulty maintaining a steady pH.

IF that is the case, I would probably take your pH down to about 7.2ish with some acid, then maybe a pound or two of baking soda.... really small changes.

This is not a good time for you to overshoot your TA and give yourself a strong upward pH drift.

i will wait another day to let my pool rest from all the chemicals and tomorrow i will add the 48 oz aking soda.and go from there. i will reply what happens....another question. if you have a lot of sequesturing agent in your pool and your ph and Chlor. levels both get high, will the stains still come back? thanks so much for answering my ?s.

If you have enough sequestrant in the water to handle the amount of metals in the water, then it is possible to raise the PH and TA fairly high and shock the pool and not have any staining. Figuring out the right amount of sequestrant can be a little hit or miss. You don't want to use too much because it is expensive, and you don't want to use too little because the stains might come back.