High calcium in fill water and drought conditions?

[Mirage21]

My fill water is around 375-400 CH.

I know that refilling water is one way to get high levels down. The other is to keep the TA and PH lower.

With southern California in drought conditions, it doesn't make sense to constantly drain\refill as the CH rises. Do some of you live with high CH and just scrub calcium scale?

Note: not sure if the rise in CH is because of new plaster. I'm only using liquid bleach btw.

Thanks.

 

[jblizzle]

Keeping the pH and TA lower does not lower the CH ... as you stated. But does lower the likelihood of calcium scaling.

You might eventually want to look into Reverse Osmosis treatment on your pool. That would lower the CH much more than refilling it.

What is the CH in your pool? It will rise due to evaporation and topping off.

 

[Melt In The Sun]

My CH out of the tap is lower (200-250ish) but I just let it rise until it hits about 1000, which takes about 3 years. Then, it's full drain and refill. I know some people capture the water from the rain gutters on their roof; that's a great idea if you have them.

 

[Richard320]

Welcome to my world!

You will never, ever, ever get your CH into the recommended range. Accept that.

What I do (it's going on right now, actually) is use pool water on the lawn, then top off with fresh. Same amount of water, but it goes through the pool first. Even if it's only 2" replaced... 2"/60" average depth = 3.33%.

For me, that means .97*850 + .03*130 = 828 CH. Not a huge drop, but it keeps me relatively even. In the winter, I aim a gutter downspout into the pool to capture that wonderful Calcium-free rainwater.

You are one of the few who will have to actually pay attention to the CSI on Poolmath. You can't do much about the CH or the temperature, but you do have some control over pH and TA. Enter all your numbers and see what you have. Then experiment and see what happens when the temperature increases, or you reduce the TA, all the variables. You'll likely discover that with a low TA 60-70, you have some room to let pH rise. But as CH climbs, that wiggle room gets less and less, and you'll be forced to lower pH at 7.5, rather than letting it drift to 7.8. It's manageable. As long as CSI stays lower than .5, there shouldn't be any problem.

As an aside, my CH readings dropped about 25% when I switched from manual swirling to using a speedstir. So your water may not be as bad as you think!

 

[Hawk]

Richard does the chlorine have any effect on the lawn?

 

[Richard320]

Nope.

 

[Hawk]

Even at maintenance levels?
If so, then that's good to hear and something I'll keep in mind when/if the time comes.

 

[Mirage21]

Even at maintenance levels?
If so, then that's good to hear and something I'll keep in mind when/if the time comes.

This is what I wanted to know as well. For me my st. Augustine grass might be sensitive to 4-6ppm Fc lol.

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[Hawk]

This is what I wanted to know as well. For me my st. Augustine grass might be sensitive to 4-6ppm Fc lol.

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Guess he's moved on to other things?..

 

[Richard320]

I already answered! My lawn thrives on it.

Somewhere on here, chemgeek has a paper that displays how the active strength of bleach is buffered by CYA, so that 5 or 6 ppm at 50 CYA is waaaay less active than the 1 or 2 PPM unbuffered chlorine in your tap water.