Curious - does Metal Magic Help Hold Ph Down As Side-Benefit?

[Swampwoman]

Greetings. I was just wondering if anyone else had this experience.

For the two seasons prior this one, I regularly had to add MA to control ph. Eg. Twice a week.

I am on well water with iron so use sequestrants -- prior seasons, jack's pink, this season switched to proteam's Metal Magic.

Since a stain treatment with large amounts of metal magic more than a month ago, and maintenance levels weekly since, I've not once had to adjust ph...has stayed right at 7.4.

My TA is a tiny bit lower this year (right at 70).

So has my pool just found its sweet spot in terms of TA (and ergo ph), or is it possible that the Metal Magic is helping "hold" the ph where the Jack's didn't?

I was just curious to see if anyone else using sequestrants had this experience. Metal Magic instructions on the bottle "tell" you to raise the ph when treating...so maybe they "know" it pushes ph down?

 

[JasonLion]

Metal Magic and Jack's products are all mildly acidic, but I suspect that most of what is going on is that TA is lower.

 

[Hilton]

Sorry this isn't an answer to your question, but ... If you have that much trouble with pH, you might want to consider adding borates to the pool. I've got a couple pools where the pH is constantly rising, and will exceed 7.8 if not treated twice a week to bring it down to 7.5. I started using BioGuard Optimizer Plus (a borate additive, and certainly my favourite - not cheap, but a better product than many others with no extra work needed) in those pools and found my pH was suddenly under control, needing lowering only once every few weeks. Bonus that the water went from crystal clear to *sparkling*, which the residents in the 55+ community loved.

 

[chem geek]

Theoretically the borates only slow down the rate of pH rise but don't reduce the amount of acid that needs to be added. They are an additional pH buffer but if they don't reduce the rate of carbon dioxide outgassing then the amount of acid eventually needed to bring the pH back down won't change.

Instead of buying BioGuard Optimizer Plus, why don't you just buy boric acid directly, say from DudaDiesel or The Chemistry Store or AAA Chemicals?

 

[Swampwoman]

^chemgeek, I do have borates in the pool and do buy same from Duda Hilton, check out DudaDiesel..free shipping makes it about half the cost of proteam supreme equivalent But thanks for the tip regardless.

My high acid demand in previous years may have also been in part due to the fact that I was attempting to keep the ph lower, eg 7.2, due to the iron. But I'm pretty clear now my pool "wants" to be at 7.4ish and will remain there happily of its own accord if I just leave it alone

Which believe me, works for me!