Acid additions

[cacciato2006]

Hello, been managing this pool for 4 months (my first pool) and everything seems to be good. The water is beautiful and the temperature is warming up here in Texas and we are getting anxious to jump in the pool since this is our first year to own it.

PH 8.07, FC 8.5, TA 80, CH225, CYA 60, salt 4000, Temp 65, CSI -0.10.

Source water PH 8.1, TA 350 the last time I checked. We are installing a whole house water conditioner to treat COOP and well water so this should be resolved before too long.

PH jumps to 8.0 or 8.1 very quickly. Took six days to go from 7.6 to 8.1. The PH above is the average of two meters and both have been checked against standards.
FC is a tad high because I upped the pump run time 6 hours and didn't adjust the cells. I'll let it naturally lower since I've made adjustments.
TA - adding 31.45% acid regularly and I try to keep TA at 70 ppm. This month it has averaged between 70 and 90 with 232 oz of acid. Seem like a lot.
CH is low but the hard water additions during the summer should bring it up without adding extra calcium.
CYA is currently low and I added 4lbs over the last few weeks. I'll add 4 more lbs to get it up to 70 ppm.
Salt is high. Last month the pool was converted to salt and I think we over did it a little. Salt cells are not complaining and I plan to let that come down with backwashes and overflows.
CSI is about where I want it, I think.

Point of confusion on my part. Most of what I read wants me to keep the PH around 7.6. My water naturally wants to be higher and quickly. When I adjust the PH with acid and the ph lowers the CSI goes below -0.3 until the PH goes back up in a few in a few days. Further, and as I understand it, Fc is not as effective with high PH but CYA has a role in helping it some fashion. Should I be concerned at all about having a higher PH or do I just add acid to maintain TA and not care about PH too much?

There has been some evaporation already and we haven't had a lot of rain.
31.45% Acid additions March 232 oz.
31.45% Acid additions February 128 oz.
31.45% Acid additions January 10 Gallons. Starting TA was >180.
Does a couple of gallons a month of acid seem reasonable during the summer given the TA and CH in the tap water? I've looked into the acid dosing machine offered by Pentair but there seems to be some issues with it. Thoughts on buying one?

Is there anything that stands out here?
Thanks,
David

 

[ajw22]

HPoint of confusion on my part. Most of what I read wants me to keep the PH around 7.6. My water naturally wants to be higher and quickly.

Keep your pH more around 7.8 +/- 0.2.

When I adjust the PH with acid and the ph lowers the CSI goes below -0.3 until the PH goes back up in a few in a few days.

That is fine.

Further, and as I understand it, Fc is not as effective with high PH but CYA has a role in helping it some fashion.

That is not enough of a difference to be a concern.

Should I be concerned at all about having a higher PH or do I just add acid to maintain TA and not care about PH too much?

Any pH in the 7's is equally good. Don't worry about your TA. You are fighting against PH 8.1, TA 350 fill water. Not much you can do about it. Add MA as needed to keep pH in the high 7's. Lowering your pH regularly will lower your TA.

Does a couple of gallons a month of acid seem reasonable during the summer given the TA and CH in the tap water?

Yes, it is reasonable.

 

[pjt]

treat COOP

What's COOP?

 

[YippeeSkippy]

Co-op water source? Community shared water, usually.

 

[cacciato2006]

Yes correct. A rural community water provider.

 

[jesse-99]

Wow, finally someone else who has the same fill water characteristics as me. My fill water is:

pH 8.0 to 8.2
TA 300 to 325 (very high)
CH 125 (very low)

Very similar to yours... I also have tons of water features that cause aeration and pH rise too. So I end up needing about 1.5 to 2 gallons of 31.45% MA every single week. This year I've invested in a Stenner Pump and 7.5 gallon tank for dosing MA automatically, which should keep pH and TA more stable and less yo-yo'ing up and down. You might want to consider one yourself, depending how much fill water you regularly have to add? Do you have any water features causing aeration too?

 

[mknauss]

CH 125 (very low)

That is technically 'hard' water ---------

 

[cacciato2006]

Wow, finally someone else who has the same fill water characteristics as me. My fill water is:

pH 8.0 to 8.2
TA 300 to 325 (very high)
CH 125 (very low)

Very similar to yours... I also have tons of water features that cause aeration and pH rise too. So I end up needing about 1.5 to 2 gallons of 31.45% MA every single week. This year I've invested in a Stenner Pump and 7.5 gallon tank for dosing MA automatically, which should keep pH and TA more stable and less yo-yo'ing up and down. You might want to consider one yourself, depending how much fill water you regularly have to add? Do you have any water features causing aeration too?

Yeah the water is terrible and the scale around the pool is bad. The previous owners did nothing about their water quality and let it be hardly swimmable. I've got the water looking good at this point but there is no dealing with the scale short of blasting it. We will deal with that later. We are looking into a whole house RO system and my understanding is it will get rid of the hardness and alkalinity along with other metals etc. Very expensive though. Do you have photos of your set up and which stenner pump your using? We have 6 pumps on this pool all running different water features so lots of aeration when they are on.

 

[jesse-99]

Yeah the water is terrible and the scale around the pool is bad. The previous owners did nothing about their water quality and let it be hardly swimmable. I've got the water looking good at this point but there is no dealing with the scale short of blasting it. We will deal with that later. We are looking into a whole house RO system and my understanding is it will get rid of the hardness and alkalinity along with other metals etc. Very expensive though. Do you have photos of your set up and which stenner pump your using? We have 6 pumps on this pool all running different water features so lots of aeration when they are on.

I went with this pump: Stenner Single Head Adjustable Pump with 7.5 Gallon Tank #1 Tube 0.2 - 3 GPD System
They have versions that are non-adjustable speed, and I'm sure those are perfectly fine. I just went with the variable speed pump just because.... Might have been overkill.

What's the whole house RO system? I have 4 massive iron filtering tanks in my basement (cost was around $6k, ugh) because of the crazy high iron levels in my well which have caused me not only grief with the pool and staining but also with the sprinkler systems causing the house bricks to turn red-brown as well (and toilets, etc.) The 4 iron filters help a ton, but they can only manage around 2500 gallons of flow before needing to have a backwash performed (automated every few days). I'm not aware of any way to get rid of high Alkalinity from my fill/well water so curious to hear how you might combat that yourself?

I have 6 pumps too and lots of water features: 2 huge waterwalls, 2 beach jets/bubblers, 1 water slide, and 1 disappearing edge, plus 37 in floor heads, all create massive aeration, so I'm really excited to finally have a MA doser this year (Stenner) and looking forward to filling up the Stenner Tank/Pump with 7 gallons of Acid and walking away for 3-4 weeks before having to refill it.

This last Fall I picked up two robots too, a wireless one from WaterTech PoolBlaster CX-1 which is nice, and a Polaris VRX IQ+ (which is even nicer). They were a huge help and time saver in the 3 weeks I had the pool open with them.

Out pools sound similar. If you wanna trade some pool pictures, shoot me a PM.

I just posted up some pictures today of my equipment pad here: Great progress on pump equipment pad area today!