I have an Intex that gets drained and stored every year. If I went the cheap route with borax and acid, would borates still be worth it? And would I really have to lower my TA to 80 if it's just going to get drained at the end of the season anyway? My fill water has a TA around 180. I tried lowering my TA last year, but found it not worth the effort. So if I wanted to borate my pool, would lowering the TA be an absolute must?
Would borates still be worth it?
- Thread starter schertzy82
- Start date
Re: So you want to add borates to your pool--Why and How
Schertzy82: my understanding having read this 20 times in the last 2 weeks is that yes lowering your TA is important because it will be even harder to lower after you borate the pool. I'm in the process of getting my TA from 200 down to 80 so I can borax it and it's taken me about 4 days and I've gotten it down to 110 - so I'm getting close - I have a waterfall for aeration and I run the spa "bubbles" a few times/day (it shuts down after 30 mins for heat issues) - so doing that I get my pH down to 7-7.2 with muriatic acid and in about 12 hours it has come up to 7.4-7.6 - so I had muriatic acid again - using pool calc to est getting it back to 7-7.2. I've gone through 4 gallons of muriatic acid to do this but I think I'll be there in 2 more days (and 2 more gallons).
You have a SWG like me and my TA and pH always try to creep up (I think this is common with SWG) - I haven't been good about keeping it down (especially the TA) and I'm now having major scaling issues - Whether it's worth doing borates if you drain the pool every year seems to be up to you but I would at least get your TA down to 120 with or without Borates - check you CSI number on pool calculator, it it's above 0.6 it could catch up to you.
Schertzy82: my understanding having read this 20 times in the last 2 weeks is that yes lowering your TA is important because it will be even harder to lower after you borate the pool. I'm in the process of getting my TA from 200 down to 80 so I can borax it and it's taken me about 4 days and I've gotten it down to 110 - so I'm getting close - I have a waterfall for aeration and I run the spa "bubbles" a few times/day (it shuts down after 30 mins for heat issues) - so doing that I get my pH down to 7-7.2 with muriatic acid and in about 12 hours it has come up to 7.4-7.6 - so I had muriatic acid again - using pool calc to est getting it back to 7-7.2. I've gone through 4 gallons of muriatic acid to do this but I think I'll be there in 2 more days (and 2 more gallons).
You have a SWG like me and my TA and pH always try to creep up (I think this is common with SWG) - I haven't been good about keeping it down (especially the TA) and I'm now having major scaling issues - Whether it's worth doing borates if you drain the pool every year seems to be up to you but I would at least get your TA down to 120 with or without Borates - check you CSI number on pool calculator, it it's above 0.6 it could catch up to you.
It greatly depends on how you value money spent on the pool vs other things, and on why you are adding borates in the first place. If you are adding borates to help control PH drift, then having the TA high kind of defeats the whole purpose. But if you are adding borates for some other reason it might be worth it.