making sodium carbonate from baking soda, etc.

[daveumbc]

My pool (30k gal vinyl) seems to go acid most of the time. This is probably from our well water being rather acidic. Also I've been using the chlorine pucks to give me more cya.

OK, Call me cheap. Does anyone make there own sodium carbonate by heating baking soda? I just tried this and it seems like a no-brainier to me. I've got all this cheap baking soda and I just have to pop it in the oven for an hour.

Then there is sodium hydroxide. A really powerful base. Mixing this with carbonic acid (this is what makes my well water acidic) seems to produce baking soda. Thereby raising TA while raising the PH.

Is there anything wrong with my chemistry here? Are there any negatives to using sodium carbonate or sodium hydroxide to raise my PH?

 

[JasonLion]

Welcome to TFP!

You can get washing soda, which is sodium carbonate, quite inexpensively. Once you account for the energy costs of running the oven, not to mention the labor, washing soda is less expensive.

Sodium hydroxide is very dangerous to handle. Once it is in the water it is fine, but we don't recommend handling it in it's pure form.

Your PH is going down because of the trichlor tablets, not the well water. If your well water was acidic enough to have a significant impact on the PH of the pool it would be dissolving rocks in the ground, which would raise the well waters PH back up.