I have a new pool as of last summer and I'm still working to get a handle on managing it. I was almost talked into adding bioguards oprimizer plus at our local pool store but with some helpful information from some other posts on tfp we decided to try to accomplish the addition of borates with 20 mule team borax and acid. I used the poolcalculator.com to figure out how much product I needed to achieve 50ppm and was able to purchased everything at Menards for under $100 22 boxes borax and 5 gallons acid. The required amount of bioguard optimizer and lo and slo was going to be $260. My pool store is also who helped install my pool and I frequent the store mainly for the free water sample testing. The test machine that my pool store uses is bioguard equipment and on the test result print out it states the desired borate range to be 30 - 35 I'm guessing ppm and the print out said to add 55lbs of optimizer? I added half borax 11 boxes and 2 gas acid and took a sample in the next day to see where my level was and the print out said 0. I was confused and concerned that maybe the borax wasn't doing what it was supposed to and thought maybe I got bad info from the Internet, wouldn't be the first time Google guided me wrong. So then I ordered up some lamotte borate test strips and tested my water and got a negative test. So then I decided to mix up a small amount a borax in a small cup of water and test that and that showed positive. Then I decided to add the other 1/2 of the borax and acid and after a couple days I took a water sample in to the pool store. The bioguard test now showed my borate level to be a 1 and now tge print out was telling me to add 53 lbs of optimizer.
Does anyone one know why the addition of over 100 lbs of 20 mule team borax is only showing to be the equivalent of 2 lbs of bioguards optimizer? Anyone have any ideas of what these test results mean? I did try the borate test strip and it is showing positive but I'm having a hard time telling what ppm? I have a hard time with test strips in general though, I may be slightly colorblind or something.
any help or advise would be greatly appreciated! Thanks!
Does anyone one know why the addition of over 100 lbs of 20 mule team borax is only showing to be the equivalent of 2 lbs of bioguards optimizer? Anyone have any ideas of what these test results mean? I did try the borate test strip and it is showing positive but I'm having a hard time telling what ppm? I have a hard time with test strips in general though, I may be slightly colorblind or something.
any help or advise would be greatly appreciated! Thanks!