I'm just starting up a new pool - I've had water in it for a week now. It'll eventually be SWG, but it's not that time yet, we're still waiting for the plaster to cure. I just want to sanity-check my strategy for dealing with the water chemistry as we're getting it started.
We've got a floating chlorine dispenser full of trichlor pucks for the short term. I think that we're just waiting for this to dissolve to bring up the CYA level, which will in turn stabilize the FC. At the moment CYA is still very low, less than 20, and FC is just at 0.6. But I don't think there's any point in worrying about this at the moment, just let the tablets dissolve.
In the meantime I've been watching the TA and pH. The TA is around 150, so I'm trying to bring that down. I've been leaving the waterfall running to keep the pH rising, so I can keep adding muriatic acid. Each day the pH goes up to 8.0, and I add enough acid to bring it to 7.5, which (I think) will get me to a TA around 80 in a week or two.
In other news, my CH is only at 170, and I've got iron and copper each at about 0.5. I know I'll need to add calcium carbonate to bring up the CH, and I should probably sequester the metals as well. But I thought I'd leave that until the rest of the chemistry is all squared away.
With the amount of dust that was initially coming off the plaster, I'm surprised that the filter hasn't gotten at all clogged. In fact, with the pump running full blast, the pressure is only about 9psi. I'm guessing this is because the builder put in an oversized filter (or that's what he tells me). And by the way, I'm seeing far less plaster dust than I did initially, but how long should I expect it to continue (with quartzite finish plaster)?
Is my approach here correct?
We've got a floating chlorine dispenser full of trichlor pucks for the short term. I think that we're just waiting for this to dissolve to bring up the CYA level, which will in turn stabilize the FC. At the moment CYA is still very low, less than 20, and FC is just at 0.6. But I don't think there's any point in worrying about this at the moment, just let the tablets dissolve.
In the meantime I've been watching the TA and pH. The TA is around 150, so I'm trying to bring that down. I've been leaving the waterfall running to keep the pH rising, so I can keep adding muriatic acid. Each day the pH goes up to 8.0, and I add enough acid to bring it to 7.5, which (I think) will get me to a TA around 80 in a week or two.
In other news, my CH is only at 170, and I've got iron and copper each at about 0.5. I know I'll need to add calcium carbonate to bring up the CH, and I should probably sequester the metals as well. But I thought I'd leave that until the rest of the chemistry is all squared away.
With the amount of dust that was initially coming off the plaster, I'm surprised that the filter hasn't gotten at all clogged. In fact, with the pump running full blast, the pressure is only about 9psi. I'm guessing this is because the builder put in an oversized filter (or that's what he tells me). And by the way, I'm seeing far less plaster dust than I did initially, but how long should I expect it to continue (with quartzite finish plaster)?
Is my approach here correct?