Recent content by aaronk

I wish I could say that there is a happy ending to report, but unfortunately, I'm still dealing with rising CH and pH. I haven't checked CH in a couple weeks, but when I last checked, it was at a 410. This is up from 310 in mid-August, and I also have not added any chemicals that have calcium...

I appreciate all the advice and feedback. I don't have a plaster sample from when it was first built, so I may need to find another angle if I decide to go after the PB for a bad plaster job.

I should've joined this forum two years ago. I've had no less than a half dozen different pool people look at my pool when I had those nodules. Not a single one said that it was poor plaster quality; they either said "I have no idea" or "bad water chemistry." I'm also concerned about the...

It took almost two years for the nodules to start forming, but if they have nothing to do with pool chemistry, then it's highly possible the PB didn't do a proper plaster job. Is it safe to say that if chemistry was not the issue then the nodules will likely start popping up again? As a...

Attached is a photo I took in April, a couple weeks before it was drained for the first time. I'm also attaching two pictures taken in May right after I drained the pool the first time but before they did an acid wash. The plaster currently looks good, and there are no calcium nodules. As for...

I can run a TA test on my fill water, but I don't think it's necessarily high. I had to add sodium bicarb not long ago, because my TA was down around 50 (probably from all the acid I had been adding). I intentionally brought it up to 100, because I read online that a higher TA can help to...

As you can see, I've added more than 3 gallons of muriatic acid in one week! You'd think my pool would have a very low pH with all that acid, but I can't even keep it below a 7.5 for more than a few hours.

Yes, we built the pool in late 2016. To give you an idea of what I'm up against, here's my water test log from the past week. 8/10/2019 FC: 2.0 pH: 7.5 TA: 110 CH: 320 CYA: 40 8/11/2019 FC: 1.0 pH: 7.8 TA: not tested CH: not tested CYA: not tested ***added 1/2 gallon 10% liquid chlorine & 5...

The builder initially blamed my water chemistry, but eventually they agreed to do the acid bath and admitted it may have been caused by improper startup (lots of plaster dust and very high CH from day 1). It seems that every pool person I've talked to about this has a different answer. There...

It definitely wasn't the only scale. There was (is) a lot of scale on the surround tile and on the stone of the spa waterfall.

I suppose it's possible the calcium nodules were coming from the plaster, but doesn't it seem more likely they were forming because of the high CH and pH (falling out of solution)? At one point my CH had reached 520 (prior to the acid wash and refill). The nodules could be scraped off with my...

Does this mean I need to buy a water softener?