ethany said:
I read that keeping the ph lower will help with staining (7.0-7.2) I have a saltwater gen. and the BBB method for swg says to keep ph between 7.5-7.6
If I kept it on the low side,would it damage the swg or other equip.?
I was typing this as chem geek and you were typing. The absolute best thing you can do for your pool is to get that expensive, "sure to give you stains" Nature 2 out of your system. I used ionization from late 80's until last year. I'm very "intimate" with the dreaded copper staining and probably the only time my pool was really safe was after the weekly shocking dose of chlorine. I suppose that one could avoid eventual copper staining but the challenges keeping system just at the right balance to avoid the stains are immense. The long, slow EXPENSIVE treatment I'm doing on my pool now is partially for copper staining. The copper stains were deposited from summer of 08 through summer of 09 after a major acid wash in 08. They may never totally go away and this 14 year old, but still in good shape (except for the copper stains) plaster has had three acid washes and I'm not willing to risk the damage another acid wash would cause.
I'm going to let the 'xperts comment on SWG health. The iron that gets in my pool comes from our blown in dust and silt/mud that the dogs drag in. So I don't know how that amount compares to a situation where the fill water is high in iron.
I have been keeping sequestrant in the pool constantly since last fall. Despite having sequestrant in water there are two conditions added together that will allow a bit of staining on the remaining calcium scale in my shallow end. (I'm doing a
very slow treatment right now, using Jack's Magenta, for calcium scale and old copper stains; that is keeping the pool in condition for swimming, using larger than "maintanence" doses of JM, and keeping pH 7-7.2) The conditions, both of which must occur together, are letting the pH even a little above 7.5
and letting the dust/silt sit on the bottom for a day or so; both conditions must be met for the light staining. And that is with sequestrant at "normal", maintenance dose. Another thing that keeps staining from occurring is
never allowing the chlorine to get low enough, for long enough to necessitate having to shock the pool. Under many conditions high levels of chlorine can cause the metals to drop out and deposit on surfaces.
I haven't had to shock my pool since finding TFP and practicing BBB so I haven't seen the metal drop out/deposit from high chlorine since I've become pool-schooled but there are enough comments on the board to convince me to never need to shock the pool.
The pool usually has much more than maintanence dose, though, so new staining rarely has a chance to occur.
I keep a really close eye on the pH, test daily when running the fountain, which I've been doing 23/7 for several weeks, (aeration raises the pH), and usually add muriatic acid daily. When I'm not running the fountain, I test every other day and make appropriate MA additions. Even though my plaster is old I don't worry too much about getting the pH lower than 7 with MA additions as it will rise on its own pretty quickly.
For me, it seems that it has been easier to keep the ph under 7.5 than to keep it between 7.5-7.8 but that's my pool and what it "wants". Every pool has different "demands".
gg=alice