Water chemistry, about to start addition of boric acid...

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FC 7.5, cc 0.5, ta 70, ph 7.4.

Interestingly enough after adding 40 lbs of boric acid my borates level is coming up as 48 ppm, so I likely have over estimated the pool volume by quite a bit. I had thought that I had 25,000 gallons but that was completely a guess, but pool math said that it would take 60 lbs to get to 50 ppm. Playing with pool math, if 40 lbs of boric acid is to get the borates level to 48 ppm then in actuality I have roughly 17,500 gallons. Opps....
 
The borates don’t really need to be exact- anywhere between 30 & 50 will get the job done as far as any benefits. Going to 50 or so just allows u to not have to replenish for a while yet still remain above 30.
I wouldn’t use the borates addition or borates test as a true judge of pool volume. Muriatic acid doses & ph results are much better for dialing things in.
 
Mdragger88 said:
The borates don’t really need to be exact- anywhere between 30 & 50 will get the job done as far as any benefits. Going to 50 or so just allows u to not have to replenish for a while yet still remain above 30.
I wouldn’t use the borates addition or borates test as a true judge of pool volume. Muriatic acid doses & ph results are much better for dialing things in.
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Thanks for that. In all reality I'm likely over estimated on the pool volume, but admittedly it has worked ok for measuring out acid and chlorine. I'm probably going to split the difference for now at 20,000 gallons and see if the measurements for acid and chlorine end up making sense.

As for borates, 48 ppm is going to be close enough for me. And as a plus I'll have another 40 lbs (bought 80 lbs thinking I'd need 60 lbs) as reserve for the coming years.
 
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bubbles^2 said:
Forgot about that, I've found that I need to clean the SWG ever few months to get the deposits off the plates. I normally check FC, CC, Ta, and pH every week, and CYA, salt, Ca once a month. I've found that I've needed to add acid pretty much every week because of the Ta. The prior pool guy mentioned to me this particular pool seems to take quite a bit of acid, and that makes sense given the SWG, negative edge and water feature, and likely fill water.

I admit I'm a bit skeptical, but the pluses for borates appears to be reasonably positive in this case. My only real worry is that once it's in, it's not going to be easy to remove it.
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I am getting ready to add borates next week. I have high alkaline well water. I’ve been working on getting my alkalinity down from 260 after we installed a new liner 4 weeks ago. I have my TA down to 100, so I’m gettin there. I had been having problems with scale in my SWG and in my pool, though it’s not as bad as I lower my TA. I’ve never added borates before, but from everything I see, it seems like it should only help once I get my TA down a little lower. In years past I always had a problem with pH rising and would add reducer a couple times a week. I’m hoping adding borates with cut down in that. I’ll be interested to hear how borates work for you.
 
lmnconn said:
I am getting ready to add borates next week. I have high alkaline well water. I’ve been working on getting my alkalinity down from 260 after we installed a new liner 4 weeks ago. I have my TA down to 100, so I’m gettin there. I had been having problems with scale in my SWG and in my pool, though it’s not as bad as I lower my TA. I’ve never added borates before, but from everything I see, it seems like it should only help once I get my TA down a little lower. In years past I always had a problem with pH rising and would add reducer a couple times a week. I’m hoping adding borates with cut down in that. I’ll be interested to hear how borates work for you.
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From what I've been reading the borates will help buffer the raise in Ta and pH. There are some other side effects that I'm hoping will translate as well, ie less chlorine use, less build up on the SWG. The further softening of water and sparkling are still positive though less so.

Because of the buffering the raise in Ta and pH will be slower, but it'll take more acid to adjust them in the future.

I'll keep this thread updated, but I'm likely going to default back to checking fc, cc, Ta, pH weekly. I'll likely watch calcium, cya and borates monthly, though I'll likely push borates even further back.
 
bubbles^2 said:
FC 7.5, cc 0.5, ta 70, ph 7.4.

Interestingly enough after adding 40 lbs of boric acid my borates level is coming up as 48 ppm, so I likely have over estimated the pool volume by quite a bit. I had thought that I had 25,000 gallons but that was completely a guess, but pool math said that it would take 60 lbs to get to 50 ppm. Playing with pool math, if 40 lbs of boric acid is to get the borates level to 48 ppm then in actuality I have roughly 17,500 gallons. Opps....
Click to expand...

Did you test borates before adding Boric acid? Is there a chance that a previous house owner had added some borates already? Or that Borax had been used to raise pH?
 
As I was reading before it looks like the rj-60 stands out in terms of warranty and chlorine production. If the pool is really a 20,000 gallon pool then I might be able to get away with the rj45 (good up to 45,000 gallons). Looks like roughly a $200 difference. Though the Jandy truclear is listed as good up to 40,000 gallons and I've had to run that at 100% plus some supplemental chlorine in the summer. I guess other than the con of being more expensive, the bigger unit should mean that I can run at much lower percentage, thereby extending the life of the cell as it wouldn't be working as hard.

Just for kicks, I checked on how much the truclear cell is to replace, at $500 it is tempting, but since last summer I've known that this SWG has had to run at 100% or boosted to keep up.
 

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Fc 3.5, cc 0.5, ta 70, pH 7.6. So Fc heading for the deck...Will need to supplement until the new swg gets here. Looks like the discountsaltpool "sale" ends tonight at midnight.

On the brighter side of things, the Ta and pH remains relatively steady for the main topic of this post borates do appear to be working, but so far it's been about a week. I'm going to take a pass on seeing how long I an push the fc before experiencing cloudiness or algae growth.
 
bubbles^2 said:
As I was reading before it looks like the rj-60 stands out in terms of warranty and chlorine production. If the pool is really a 20,000 gallon pool then I might be able to get away with the rj45 (good up to 45,000 gallons). Looks like roughly a $200 difference. Though the Jandy truclear is listed as good up to 40,000 gallons and I've had to run that at 100% plus some supplemental chlorine in the summer. I guess other than the con of being more expensive, the bigger unit should mean that I can run at much lower percentage, thereby extending the life of the cell as it wouldn't be working as hard.

Just for kicks, I checked on how much the truclear cell is to replace, at $500 it is tempting, but since last summer I've known that this SWG has had to run at 100% or boosted to keep up.
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I wouldn't go by the gallons that the manufacturers claim (that is an advertising gimmick rather than a quantifiable spec), but by the chlorine output. You can get this from PoolMath. Go to Effects of Adding and search for the different models.

The options you mentioned:
Trueclear: 0.93 lbs/day
RJ45: 2 lbs/day
RJ60: 3 lbs/day

The Trueclear was obviously too small for you, so I'd take the opportunity and upgrade to something that has at least double the output of your Trueclear.
 
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mgtfp said:
I wouldn't go by the gallons that the manufacturers claim (that is an advertising gimmick rather than a quantifiable spec), but by the chlorine output. You can get this from PoolMath. Go to Effects of Adding and search for the different models.

The options you mentioned:
Trueclear: 0.93 lbs/day
RJ45: 2 lbs/day
RJ60: 3 lbs/day

The Trueclear was obviously too small for you, so I'd take the opportunity and upgrade to something that has at least double the output of your Trueclear.
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That is a very good point. From that point of view the RJ45 would likely be good enough. The RJ60 would probably be enough to end up shocking the pool if I want to in the future. While this isn't money that I wanted to spend right now, I knew that the cell was on it's way out, so this at least gives me the option to go bigger.
 
I think too that the RJ45 should be enough. In your 20000 gal pool you can create 6ppm in 12h with that (or 12ppm in 24h), that sounds about right.

"Shocking" shouldn't really be a criterion anyway, a SLAM should be done with liquid chlorine and the SWG turned off.
 
bubbles^2 said:
That is a very good point. From that point of view the RJ45 would likely be good enough. The RJ60 would probably be enough to end up shocking the pool if I want to in the future. While this isn't money that I wanted to spend right now, I knew that the cell was on it's way out, so this at least gives me the option to go bigger.
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RJ45 is plenty big and if you maintenance the FC at the TFP levels you won’t ever need to “shock” the pool. TFP uses a SLAM method to fix those times where someone didn’t maintain the minimum FC level and that requires liquid chlorine.
 
bubbles^2 said:
As I was reading before it looks like the rj-60 stands out in terms of warranty and chlorine production. If the pool is really a 20,000 gallon pool then I might be able to get away with the rj45 (good up to 45,000 gallons). Looks like roughly a $200 difference. Though the Jandy truclear is listed as good up to 40,000 gallons and I've had to run that at 100% plus some supplemental chlorine in the summer. I guess other than the con of being more expensive, the bigger unit should mean that I can run at much lower percentage, thereby extending the life of the cell as it wouldn't be working as hard.

Just for kicks, I checked on how much the truclear cell is to replace, at $500 it is tempting, but since last summer I've known that this SWG has had to run at 100% or boosted to keep up.
Click to expand...
The jandy has an output of .92#/day
mgtfp said:
I wouldn't go by the gallons that the manufacturers claim (that is an advertising gimmick rather than a quantifiable spec), but by the chlorine output. You can get this from PoolMath. Go to Effects of Adding and search for the different models.

The options you mentioned:
Trueclear: 0.93 lbs/day
RJ45: 2 lbs/day
RJ60: 3 lbs/day

The Trueclear was obviously too small for you, so I'd take the opportunity and upgrade to something that has at least double the output of your Trueclear.
Click to expand...
Yes 🙌 always be sure u aren’t comparing apples to oranges. Go by the #/day
 

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