Ignore it or Treat it

[71ailmar]

You should be able to get thru the Summer and early Fall with your high CH - but a full drain after the weather here "cools" off will be in order.
It's just way to hot to do a drain right now.
You will need to play the pH and TA game for the rest of the hot weather.

Chances are you will evaporate most of your entire pool volume ever year - but the CH, being a solid, doesn't evaporate. So your CH will rise by at least your tap water CH on a yearly basis.

I was able to manage a CH of almost 1500 - but it took keeping the pH down around 7.2. Of course, I did need to add baking soda a few times that Summer to keep the TA from dropping lower than 50-ish.
After that, I decided to plumb my water softener to my autofill line. This has has allowed my CH to only climb 50ppm (fifty ppm) in almost 3 years.

Are you in PHX proper or one of the 'burbs?

When your SWG gives out, seriously consider replacing it with an IC60.
With 31k gallon pool and in The Valley of the Sun, an IC40 is just too small.
We recommend an SWG sized for at least 2x the pool volume.

For sure we're looking at replacing the SWG to an IC60.....about 6-8 months after the pool was built (3 years now) while we were learning about the actual management of the water was when we realized that we should have gone with the larger SWG. We were going by the recommendations of a pool guy that owns his own pool business after being in the commercial pool industry for a couple of decades. I thought, that was a chump move on his part to recommend an ic40 for an over 30k gallon pool! That's when I realized nobody will manage my pool better than me and stopped hanging on every word the pool guy said or Leslie's for that matter. TFP has been the biggest help in that regard!

We're in one of the Phoenix burbs (Mesa/Gilbert area). And I was considering exchanging the pool water last November when it was about 1100 CH but we decided to hang on for 1 more year. Explored refilling with an RO company but it was going to be over $800 and my husband thought it be easier/cheaper to empty and do a tap fill ourselves...maybe costs about $250-300 in water...

As for installing our own RO system to our fill line, it was going to be cumbersome the work involved and the eye sore and to maintain it...we decided to just deal with the hard water. Our home's water softener plumb line is inside our attached garage and the pool fill line is in the opposite direction so that wasn't an option.

So you maintained up to 1500 CH doing what...adding MA every day or two to keep the pH down (along with occasional baking soda for the TA)? I feel like that's what I'd have to do and I'm not sure I can maintain that type of consistency.

 

[duraleigh]

That's when I realized nobody will manage my pool better than me and stopped hanging on every word the pool guy said or Leslie's for that matter. TFP has been the biggest help in that regard!

You have moved into the Masters Degree Program of pool water management. A bedrock principle of TFP is that you, the pool owner, know more about and cares more about your pool than anyone. With TFP as a guide, you know more about the chemistry than virtually anyone at Leslies or the pool guy. You are the expert now or soon will be.

 

[71ailmar]

You have moved into the Masters Degree Program of pool water management. A bedrock principle of TFP is that you, the pool owner, know more about and cares more about your pool than anyone. With TFP as a guide, you know more about the chemistry than virtually anyone at Leslies or the pool guy. You are the expert now or soon will be.

Thank you for the confidence booster, duraleigh!
For sure there are things I feel very confident in with our pool management (and even helping neighbors manage theirs when their pool guy isn't keeping up...one neighbor ended up with a green spa and was waiting on the pool guy to show up and fix it ). And for those things that I'm still building knowledge on, it's a huge help to come to TFP and read through sources or ask questions.

Thank you for your time on this forum, and to all you others that come on here as well!
Happy 4th everyone.

 

[pjt]

Our home's water softener plumb line is inside our attached garage and the pool fill line is in the opposite direction so that wasn't an option.

Have you considered a RV water softener?

 

[proavia]

As for installing our own RO system to our fill line, it was going to be cumbersome the work involved and the eye sore and to maintain it...we decided to just deal with the hard water. Our home's water softener plumb line is inside our attached garage and the pool fill line is in the opposite direction so that wasn't an option.

For clarification, one wouldn't install their own RO system - well they could, but it would be expensive to install and maintain.

Instead, a water softener can be installed. Either a whole house water softener solution for the entire house or an RV type water softener just for the pool autofill.

As for the present water softener being far away from the pool's autofill, you could look into installing a PEX pipe from the softener, up thru the attic and bring it out under the house eve close to the autofill connection. Then tou could transition the PEX pipe to PVC (paint any exposed pipe) and connect to the autofill line. Another option is to have the pipe exit the garage and go into the ground. You would need to trench around the house to bring the new piping to the autofill connection location. There's several ways to plumb a water softener to the autofill if you really want to.

Also - change "Phoenix" to your actual city.
Knowing the actual city can help provide advise about draining/refilling requirements of individual cities. As an example, Chandler requires draining to the sanitary sewer cleanout on ones own property, other cities allow draining to the street - some cities require a permit to drain to the street, others don't, Mesa bases their monthly sewer rate on water used for 3 months early in the calendar year (so not draining/refilling during those months can save money), other cities don't. So knowing the city can sometimes provide additional needed info.