New Pool - Alkalinity HIGH

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agent86

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Jul 3, 2009
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Montgomery, TX
Will have my signature updated shortly...but in the mean time we just finished up with a new pool construction..~23.5k gallon gunite/diamond brite pool (will switch over to salt when everything is stabilized)

PB added a bunch of startup chemicals (metal out, super shock, etc....but no muriatic acid...and currently alkalinity level is currently around 260ppm...

I know I should be providing more but wanted to get the Alkalinity level spot on first before testing anything else...

Currently have pump on full circulation..and current Chlorine level is close to 3.0 judging from the color test...

I added 1.5 gallons of muriatic acid....how long before I can re-test the levels? I'm sure I'll need to add more but don't want to rush things...
 
please tell me you tested your ph before pouring that kind of MA in the pool.
taking care of TA before anything else is like putting the icing on the cake before baking it. and depending on what your ph was, you may have just burnt your cake to a crisp. what are your other numbers?
 
New pool...officially filled up this past Wednesday (8/5)...

PB added on the following day (Thursday) one 5lb container of Super SHOCK-IT, a couple bottles of some Metal Out (can't find containers), and I found an empty 4lb Pool Stabilizer container...

Chemicals still stabilizing??

Thanks
 

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4lbs of cya in a 23,500 gallon pool will get you roughly 20ppm cya. I would be thinking about adding more of that. you can still wait a week or so if you want, as overshooting cya isn't fun. are they coming out to add anything else?
also, you can test your fill water if you like, but it's obviously high and you're probably going to be testing quite a bit while you lower it. just keep an eye on the reagent and order refills early if you plan on getting them online. there is an article in pool school about lowering TA, but as you have brand new plaster your ph is going to be rising quite a bit anyway. I personally wouldn't aerate or do anything to raise the ph at this point, but monitor closely and add acid as needed or as instructed by the builder. I tend to think that they will be coming out again. any idea?
 
Hopefully the PB mentioned that the pH will rise a whole lot at first; experience on this forum is that the pH can take up to a year to really settle down, although the pH will stop rising quite so fast after maybe a month or three.

So, shop around for good prices and stock up on the MA, you're gonna need it.

Normally, as you add acid, the TA will drop as well as the pH. But in a new plaster situation I'm not sure what the TA does. Somebody with more experience will have to advise on that.

Regarding CYA, in 23.5k gallons, 4lb stabilizer is worth about 20ppm according to the Pool Calculator so you're going to need more than that. Alternatively you could use trichlor as a primary chlorine source for a while, which will contribute to chlorine, CYA, and lowering pH all at once. It looks like you'd want about 15 of the 8-oz pucks (over time, not all at once) to raise CYA by another 20 or so.
--paulr
 
agent86 said:
Yeah, when the PB tested the water for the alkalinity, you could tell he was quite surprised on how high it was and did say I would struggle with keeping it down...specially when the water autofill kicks on throughout the week...
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It will come down eventually. My pool is at about 100 now, it does bounce around a lot. I got it down to 80 but in a month or two it is back up to 110. I add acid maybe once a week just to keep pH in range. I've only attacked the TA one time to get it down from 140 to 80. I do add rather a lot of fill water.... even though we got the pool leak fixed, at least the main leak, there may be another or two minor ones. Might have gotten those puttied today, we'll see. Or else the fill water is just due to evaporation from the waterfall.

With the autofill, will there be any way to monitor how much water it adds over time? This pool apparently had a leak from the time it was built, 8 years ago, until we bought the house. We knew there had to be a leak, even though both house and pool inspectors said no. Finally we found it and fixed it (underneath rock coping, very hard to see) and there are still a few places that are suspicious. Were I not filling up the pool so often during the winter, the wet season, I would have dismissed it like the prior owners did.
 
With the autofill, will there be any way to monitor how much water it adds over time?
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Great question...really didn't think about that...I'll have to look into that one, I think the perfect solution would be for the automated computer controlled unit to provide details on a weekly/monthly readout but I'm not counting on that!

Thanks
 

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