Alkalinity vs. PH

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rwrogers11

rwrogers11

0
Apr 3, 2011
70
Katy, Tx
My alkalinity is off the charts, but my PH is in range. When talking to the pool store, they tell me to put in 10 lbs of PH Minus, so I did, dropped my PH way low, but brought the alkalinity down some. Though it still was not in range. So now the pool store tells me I need to add 8 lbs of PH plus to bring the PH back up, so I did. I brought the PH back up, but the alkalinity went back off the chart. After going through this cycle twice with the pool store, I'm starting to wonder if they have any idea of what they are talking about.

Is there any way to bring the alkalinity and PH both into rage at the same time?

Pool Specs:

18' Doughboy - Above Ground
6800 Gallons
1HP Hayward Power-Flo Matrix pump
Hayward Star Clear Cartridge Filter C500 with 50 GPM flow rate.
Pool Frog mineral system, no chlorine backpack though.
3" chlorine pucks in floater.
Pool Rover Vacuum
Taylor K-2005 Testkit

Hardness: 70 ppm
FC: .5 ppm
PH: 7.6
TA: 300 ppm
Cyanuric: 28 ppm

Tap Water:

Hardness: 40 ppm
FC: 1.5 ppm
PH: 8.0
TA: 310 ppm
Cyanuric: >28 - testkit can not read it.


Thanks,

Richard
 
Welcome to TFP :wave: Your local pool store has you dancing to their song and yanking hard earned money from your pockets :grrrr:

You have high TA fill water, like I do. You can approach it two ways, but for now, since your hardness (CH) is low, your risk of calcuim scaling is very low and you state your PH is pretty stable. If in fact your PH is stable, when the PH gets to 7.8 just use muratic acid or dry acid (PH down) to drop the PH to 7.2 and it will drop your TA some. High TA promotes PH rise, so the PH will drift up on it's own. Over time, you TA will drop and so will your acid demand.

The other alternative is to just go lower TA as fast as possible, but from the sounds of it I don't think you need to be that agressive.

In general acid lowers PH and TA. To raise PH without raising TA, you do not want to use PH+, rather aeration of you water (point your return up) will raise PH without any effect to TA.
 
Welcome to TFP.

You've just been pool stored! :( Don't feel too bad. Lots of us have been pool stored.

The first thing you need to do is read Pool School. There's a link to it in my sig as well as at the top right of every page.
You need to raise your FC up to at least 4ppm and keep it there. Also, since you're using pucks I'd be really surprised if your CYA is only 28 unless you recantly opened the pool. How did you test that?

There is certainly a way to raise pH without affecting TA much and there's a way to lower TA by using the natural tendency for pH to rise.

In your instance you need to lower TA, so lets attack that first (after you add some chlorine). The easiest way to do it is to turn an eyeball up so the flow breaks the surface causing some aeration. Do that until your pH gets to about 7.8 or so then add enough Muratic Acid (or pH minus) to get the pH back to 7.4 or so. Raising pH by aeration doesn't raise Ta but adding acid lowers it. Just repeat this process until the TA gets to where the pH doesn't rise very fast. If you don't know about the Pool Calculator now would be a good time to learn.

Having said all that, you can just let your pH rise normally and adjust it whenever it gets to 7.8 or so. It'll bring the TA down as you do that.
 
Do every other customer that the pool store "serves" a favor and go back and demand your money back on at least the ph plus. I'd think you'd be pretty mad? Think of how much of a favor you'll be doing this board by not having to answer/fix this same question that many times again from their customer base if nothing else. The pool store level of stupidity-------if that's what it is------------ almost sounds intentional/criminal to me. I had to rant--------this just sounds like a straight forward scam to me. Oh, and welcome aboard!
 
While using trichlor tabs, your TA won't be too much trouble because the tabs are acidic and will offset the pH rise from the high TA. However, you will soon need to reduce the use of tabs due to their high cyanuric acid levels. Once you switch to liquid chlorine (recommended) as your primary source of chlorine, then the high TA will become much more of a problem.

As the water warms up, you will see an increase in the amount of pH rise due to the high TA. You should begin lowering the TA now and switch over to liquid chlorine once your cyanuric acid hits 50 ppm.

Also, ditch the Frog. The metals will do nothing but cause you problems.
 
Can you send me any links to discussions on the Pool Frog. Just curious as to why its bad. To my understanding using the mineral system allows you to use less chlorine. I may be wrong and often am, but I would like to read whats been discussed before so I can get a better understanding.

Thanks,

Richard
 
You can search the forum...that's a sales slogan and myth...sorry :cry:

here is what we have in pool school (link in my sig) regarding alt. sanitizers

Myth #4: Mineral systems are good alternative sanitizers.
With all the push for "natural" things, one might conclude that a mineral system would be great for your pool. After all, minerals are natural and healthy, right? Not in this case. The minerals here refer to the metals silver and copper. While these metals do kill algae, there can be many other contaminants in your water. These minerals do NOTHING to destroy these other pathogens. All mineral systems are used in conjunction with chlorine, which is proven to kill all of the complex pathogens found in your water, including algae. If you are using chlorine anyway, and properly maintaining your water, you have no need for the added 'minerals' and in fact they can cause problems of their own, like staining and green hair.

alternative-sanitizers-and-chemical-free-pools-the-truth-t3025.html
 

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Thanks dmanb2b, that was very informative and easy to understand. I think I will have to kill the frog, and increase my chlorine.

I plan on working the PH minus to lower the PH / Alkalinity, then using my fountain that I bought to aerate the pool and bring the PH back up naturally.

Any suggestions on how much PH Minus I should do at a time, and how long to Aerate the pool?

Thanks,

Richard
 
pH minus is most likely sodium bisulfate which adds sulfates to your water. We normally recommend lowering pH by using muriatic acid as it doesn't add any. If you already have the pH minus or have an aversion to using acid then the pH minus is fine.

Have you learned to use the Pool Calc yet? If not then now would be a good time. For pH you put your current pH in the "Now" column and what you'd like it to be in the "Target" column and the calculator will tell you how much to add.
 
I'm looking at the pool calculator as we speak. Having to go back and make sure I know what each chemical is in the definitions part.

The only issue I have with using muriatic acid is it being a vinyl pool and I've heard that muriatic acid is not good for it.

Any thoughts on using muriatic acid in a vinyl pool?
 
And when/if you convert to liquid chlorine you would do the same as Dave suggests.... (Don't direct feed the system like you do with the 3" pucks)

If your using Tri/dichlor tabs then you are adding CYA and if you can't test for it you don't know how much you have.
Too much CYA makes your FC less effective thus requiring more chlorine to do the same job

Purchase a good test kit that measures CYA Most here would recomment the TF-100
many of the mods and members have links to the site for the TF-100

Good luck
 
well in going through all of this, I found another area that the pool guy lied about. He wrote on the paper that it was 6800 Gallons, but that didn't sound right so I used a few online calculators and I'm coming up with 7600 Gallons.

18' round pool, with an average depth of 48".

Let me know if I'm wrong on coming up with 7600, please.
 

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