Recent content by Mitchum

Thanks, harleysilo. I look forward to hearing how things go, especially related to how stable your ph becomes in the coming weeks (I too fight rising ph levels every week) and any taste/smell effects. I'm less worried about how sparkly the water looks as that's a minor advantage in my opinion.

I've seen a few comments about the bad taste of the water. Can someone else that has added borates already please comment on that?

OK. Two votes against using a 1" line for a suction-side cleaner (altough I don't get anything bigger than .5" in my skimmer basket). I still want to use this 1" line for the reasons stated above but I don't want to buy/run another pump just for the cleaner. [s:2n9ek9iw]Is it possible to...

Yes, I added about an 1" to 1.5" of water. I've started adding conditioner to bring it back up. Why do you ask? P.S. I live in San Diego. It doesn't rain here... :wink:

I saw a question early in this thread about the effects of borates on eyes but never saw an answer. My daughters like to open their eyes in the pool. Will a borate level of 50 ppm hurt your eyes if you open them underwater?

Plus, I add about 8 oz of MA every other day to keep pH in the 7.8 to 7.5 range, so I'm surprised that my TA isn't much lower...

My pool was about an inch low so I did add some water but it couldn't have been more than 200 gallons...

I was out of town for a week. When I came back, my pH was above 8.2. I lowered it to 7.5 and measured my TA. For some reason, my TA climbed up to 90 while I was gone (it was 60 to 70 before I left). Is this common? It's taking me quite some time to get it down to 50...

OK. I still haven't added borates yet. I continue to add acid every other day or so but the TA seems to stay stable even though I'm not adding anything to bring it back up. So this morning, I brought pH down to 7.2 (I typically only bring it down to 7.5). Prior to that, here were my...

I have some time between now and July, so I have time to dial all of this in. That will give me time to see how the pool chemisty works with the borates. Should I strive to keep TA around 50 at all times instead of the suggested level of 60 to 70 for an SWG pool? Or just when I plan to be...

As mentioned in the original post, I try to keep it between 60 and 70. It's 60 at the moment.

We'll be leaving for a 2-week vacation in July. I typically keep the pool at: FC: 5ish pH: 7.5 to 7.8 TA: 60 to 70 CYA: 70 Salt: 3000 We have a SWG, so keeping the FC level where it needs to be isn't a problem. What I'm worried about in rising pH. My pool typically goes from 7.5 to 7.8 in 2...

I'm considering getting a new pool cleaner and changing the plumbing a bit, but first, let me define the current setup: - I have a Baracuda G2 suction-side cleaner that is attached to the skimmer using a Vac Mate. - I don't have a separate pump for my cleaner. - The plugs at the bottom of the...

My CSI is -0.31. So what you're saying is that CH by itself isn't a big issue. It's the impact of CH on the CSI that I need to monitor. Is this correct?

I got my TF100 test kit over the weekend. I measured the water and this is what I got: FC: 5 CC: 0.5 (this was actually probably 0. I've been reading a bit and the water was still very slightly pink in the FC test) TC: 5.5 pH: 7.4 TA: 70 CH: 600 (water was purple, not blue so I need to re-run...