SWG TA Recommendations

[jagfan]

I'm going to have a Hayward SWG installed in the next few weeks and in preparation - read Waterbear's SWG Water Balance guidelines. He recommends:

Adjust your Total Alkalinity to 60-90 ppm. (This is IMPORTANT!).

Are those parameters for all SWGs? If so, help me understand why in simple terms. The Hayward manual recommends TA of 80-120 ppm. For a vinyl liner pool, it was my understanding the TA could be as high as 150. Thanks

 

[JasonLion]

Higher TA levels and a SWG will almost always result in the PH drifting up. The higher the TA level, the faster your PH will drift up. The range in waterbear's guidelines is chosen to minimize the rate at which the PH rises, keeping it down to something manageable. You can run with higher TA levels, but the rate at which the PH rises might get annoying.

The rate at which PH rises does vary somewhat from pool to pool. Some people need to use levels at the bottom end of the range, and others are fine at levels somewhat higher than we suggest.

 

[Guest]

According to APSP recommendations TA should be 100-120 for stabilzied chloirne, bromine, chlorine gas. and MPS because they are acidic and the higher TA will keep the pH moving upward.
However, for the unstabilized chlorines and SWGs which are NOT acidic a lower TA (they recommend 80-100) will keep the pH from drifting upward as fast. TA is actually another name for carobnate hardness and it is a buffer system that will keep tryng to move the pH towards 8.3. Runnig it even a bit lower has found to be even better for SWGs because of the constant aeration created by the generation of hydrogen gas in the cell.
Here is some reading that might be useful:
ta-what-is-it-really-t4979.html
water-balance-tips-for-a-swg-t3663.html
how-to-lower-ta-t5341.html
so-you-want-to-add-borates-to-your-pool-why-and-how-t4921.html