civicturbo said:
We have ALOT of badness in our water here in Las Vegas, that's why you see the white band around lake Mead where the water level dropped
The
Las Vegas Valley Water District says your Total Hardness is about 288 ppm. Though high, the Calcium Hardness (CH) portion of that will be lower. Nevertheless, with evaporation and refill it can increase rather quickly over time. The
Las Vegas Valley Water District says that 50-70 gallons per square foot is lost from evaporation so that's 80-112 inches per year or about 2 full pool volumes of water (if average 4.5 foot depth). So if no water softener were used, the hardness level would triple in just one year if the pool remained uncovered. It's a very dicey situation because you count on such evaporation to keep the water cooler during the day (otherwise the sun would heat it up). Your only other option would be to use a white or reflective pool cover, but if that were kept on most of the time then the water would get to the average of the day/night temps which would be
too hot. If you kept it on only during the day and uncovered it at night, then the pool could stay cooler and have less than half the evaporation rate and hardness buildup. No easy choices here.