Why do you want that in your pool????

[firstbase]

So I go to my local hardware guy, nice mom and pop store, very knowledgeable on many things in the past, to pick up some MA to bring down the TA in prep for adding boric acid to raise borates. As a Side comment while I am paying I asked "Do you sell Boric Acid?". He says "Why? You have cockroaches or ants?" "Nope, going to add it to my pool." Silence and a look from him like I got three heads. "Why would you add it to your pool?" "To raise borate level, helps stabilize pH, guard against algae, more sparkly water". "Been doing this 40 years, never heard of that. You want soft water in the pool not hard water." At that point I backed out as I didn't feel ike explaining troublefreepool, Pool School, etc.

I realize his lack of knowledge doesn't mean much but what did he mean by saying I need soft water and not hard? Can someone school me on it? I was surprised as his hardware store is smack in the middle of a 1,000 swimming pools...seems like he would have run across it at some point!

Thanks in advance for any comments!

 

[pooldv]

Water on the softer side feels better to your skin. PoolMath will calculate your CSI after you enter your test results. Borates changes the CSI a little. But, it is easy to move CSI a little to offset it. Ideal CSI is -0.3 to 0.

More here, Pool School - Calcium Scaling

 

[foobert]

<speculation> He's prolly equating soft water with less stuff in solution. Excess calcium can be a problem with hard fill water, so a naive assumption might be that more dissolved stuff in the water is a "bad thing".</speculation>

I wouldn't sweat his comment.

 

[duraleigh]

Like foobert, I think he was just making a false assumption about hard and soft water.

 

[firstbase]

Thanks guys. I could tell by the look on his face that he hadn't a clue about what I was doing. I am not knowledgeable enough to explain so I backed out of it. Just curious about his comment.

 

[Patrick_B]

That's ok, there are lots of people who are truly knowledgeable on pool water that aren't that aware of using Borates. Personally, I think we sometimes make too much of it here even though I fully realize it's potential. It is completely optional, and often gets those new to TFPC distracted from the essential core elements of what a pool needs. It's also somewhat expensive for those with larger pools.