So you want to add borates to your pool--Why and How

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Quick thought. Has anyone made a excel chart like the charts they have for SWG to tell you how much BORAX to add for how many gallons you have and what the level is in your pool? I think this would be huge for this method. I am going to try it out on one of my clients pools this week.

One other question. Is borates like CYA? Once its in, it has to be flushed or drained out? Or does the level go down over time?
 
Not an excel chart but if you use the pool calculator it will tell you how much to add of 20 mule team and MA to get the borates to 50ppm http://www.poolcalculator.com/

Mine in my pool stayed at a constant 50ppm all summer long I used it for the first time starting this year so I dont know about over the winter as it is closed because Im in Michigan and it is a block of ice right now! LOL

Brian
 
I have to ask:

I have a 22K gallon pool. Working out the numbers, I need about 17 or 18 boxes of Borax and 5.5 gallons of acid. Borax price around here is about 3 bux/box (some places have it for 2.XX, some places have it for 4.XX), I havent checked out the price of the acid yet.

Assuming 18 boxes @ 3.00 each, Im at 54 bux. I can get enough ProTeam Supreme Plus for about 100 shipped.

Is it worth the extra $$$ to avoid dealing with handling acid, 18 boxes of Borax, etc? Im not sure.

Has anyone else found it to be better *value* (not necessarily cheaper) to use the ProTeam stuff instead?
 
I just did the boric acid route from the chemistry store. I have trouble with pH rise as our area is very alkaline, so I am always trying to get my pH down. My TA was about 80 at the time. No chlorine in the pool yet- still using polyquat- water is still 60 degrees.
I am using Lamotte test strips. I guessed that I had around 5-10 ppm in the pool before I started from past Borax additions (strips did not arrive in time for a pre-test). I added 15 lbs of boric acid to my approx 20K gallon pool- the pH stayed at a nice even 7.5 (where I like it) and the TA changed not at all.
My Lamotte strips tell me I have around 30ppm of borates now. My husband and I had a long discussion of which color of pinkish-tan-orange that was, so this is our best guess. That was the expected result however so no surprises there.
The boric acid crystals from chemistry store are very fine so I poured them slowly in front of my return a cup at a time and they dissolved immediately with only a fine residue in the bottom that I had to sweep once to finish dissolving. I bought 3 containers of 15 lbs each, and the shipping for my rural area came to the same cost of a another container.
I will add the next container when the water gets warmer and I have a chance to "feel" the level. I do not like soft water- I have lived all over the country and have experienced water so hard it could not foam with dish soap and water so soft that it came out of the tap looking and feeling like dish soap. I like it a little hard of neutral, so I do not want it to get too borated for me.
Chemistry store was fast, and the packages were well packed. Boric acid crystals are HEAVY though. Those containers are not that big, but wow, that stuff is dense. I collapsed a shelf with them, not realizing that 15 lbs in that small of an area could do that much damage. They are on the floor now.
 
I checked out thechemistrystore. After shipping Im looking at about 110 or so for the boric acid required.

I can get the required amount of ProTeam Supreme Plus off ebay for less than that even including shipping. Granted, its still more expensive than Borax + acid, but there is much less work involved.
 
50 lbs of boric acid from The Chemistry Store delivered to Maryland is $107. The best price I saw for ProTeam Supreme Plus on eBay was $149 delivered for 45 lbs. That makes boric acid from The Chemistry Store $2.14/pound and ProTeam Supreme from eBay $3.31/pound, which isn't even close.

Using California, instead of Maryland, the shipping at The Chemistry Store goes up substantially, for a total of $131 delivered. The eBay price remains the same. At $2.62/pound for boric acid, it is still less than ProTeam Supreme Plus at eBay. Alternatively, you could get boric acid from AAA Chemicals, which is cheaper with shipping to California (though more to Maryland). Their total is $116 delivered, or $2.32/pound.

Perhaps you were accidentally looking at ProTeam Supreme, which requires lots of muriatic acid, just like Borax does. It is about $105 for 45 lbs delivered on eBay. That is $2.33/pound, but that doesn't count the acid, which will make it significantly more expensive before you are done.

The calculations for smaller sizes are somewhat different, though The Chemistry Store remains less expensive for most sizes shipped to most locations.
 
It was definitely ProTeam Supreme *PLUS*.

But I realized I was borking the calculation for how many lbs. Was looking at 40 lbs of PTS+, when in reality I need at least 50 (22K gallon pool, no borate level to start). At that point PTS+ is more expensive on Ebay (of course).

So it looks like my best bet is still TheChemistryStore.

Thank you for helping me see the error in my ways :)
 
I have been considering this for a few years--especially as I like to keep CYA and Cl as low as I can get away with. The clincher would be:

Does anyone know if this stuff is toxic to ground hogs? I successfully poison gassed the burrow they built next to the new filter pad (nice soft dirt--lazy effers), but Burrow #2 is far enough into the woods I can't find the hole, and I don't like them digging under the fence and drinking my water and swimming nude in my pool at all hours....
 
This link gives general info on boron toxicity. The LD50 dose, which is the lethal dose for 50% of the test subjects, is 400-700 mg Boron / kg body weight for mice and rats, 210 for guinea-pigs, 250-350 for dogs, rabbits, cats. I would expect other mammals including ground hogs to be roughly order-of-magnitude similar.

This means that they won't die from drinking normal amounts of the pool water. Ground hogs are around 10 pounds so approx. 4 kg. That means they would have to consume perhaps 200*4 = 800 mg Boron to be likely to die. At 50 ppm Borates, that's 800/50 = 16 liters of water they'd have to drink every day for weeks.

You'll have to find another way to keep these ground hogs away. If you could get them to eat the concentrated Boric Acid or Borax directly (perhaps by putting it into some food) then this would be a poison, but it's not specific so would be dangerous to any animal that ate it. You'd be better off using standard poison similar to what you've already done.

Richard
 

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PH calculations in my Pool Calculator now correct for the Borate level, as of March 2009. As always, PH calculations are still somewhat approximate, but they should now be within 10-20% even when you have a high Borate level.
 
Jason, in trying to understand boric acid strength, i googled and came up with a site rosemill.com. They have various products which I imagine are typical. One product "technical grade" is 99 % pure B2O3 but seemingly less in content: 56% minimum B2O3. The same for "pH grade". there is another product "ACS Reagent" which is 99% H3BO3.

Can anyone explain all this? tech grade may be "99 pct pure" but contains less actual boric acid. This reagent is seeming stronger and has somewhat different chemical compound.

Thanks[attachment=0:16u1okus]Rosehill boric acid compounds.doc[/attachment:16u1okus]
 

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This link describes boric oxide in more detail where it is also called anhydrous boric acid. It is not the same as boric acid though when added to water (or if it absorbs water from the air) it reverts to Boric Acid as follows (this is very exothermic -- gives off a lot of heat):

B2O3 + 3H2O ---> 2H3BO3
Boric Oxide + Water ---> Boric Acid

In the link that jwfrank gave, the product itself is actually boric acid. The reference to B2O3 in the "Technical Analysis" is just pointing out the purity when one heats the product to remove its water content (i.e. the reverse of the above reaction). Since the molecular weight of Boric Oxide is 69.6182 g/mole compared to Boric Acid which is 61.833 g/mol, then with the factor of 2 as noted in the equation above, Boric Acid is technically 69.6182/(2*61.833) = 56.295% Boric Oxide and 43.705% water.

In other words, the "Boric Acid Technical (orthoboric acid)" product is what you want and you can ignore the subtleties of their "Technical Analysis".

Richard
 

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