Borate Testing

Romoth said:

Hi all,

With the help I found here, I've had a pretty stress free pool experience after getting settled in. After reading up on the advantages, and having a relatively large overflow from my spa, I wanted to add borates to my pool. Pool Math suggested 26 lbs of boric acid to get to 50 parts. I only added 20 lbs to start. Long story short, I can't make hide nor hair out of my test strip results. I tested prior to adding anything and it looked like 100. I tested after adding and after about 6 tests, this is the closest I got to looking reasonable. Can anyone give me some advice on how to get these readable? Also, am I safe to swim? I'm 99.99% sure borates have never been added to this pool. The PB wouldn't have, and I've handled the chemistry from inception and I haven't.View attachment 407715

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I just added it to my pool too, 10 lbs to start 1/2 (10,000 gal pool) and I had a hard time at first like you trying to figure out the reading on the Taylor borate test strip which looked like yours, I found reading it in direct sun light helped me a lot to make a match to 30 ppm. I made sure I did like the directions said 2 seconds only in the water and then hold flat and wait for 30 secs then compare to chart. I used a product called Pro Team Supreme Plus which is more expensive but suppose to eliminate the ph rise problem from using regular Borax to add borates. I can't verify that because I did have high PH and really high TA = 180, but my chlorine was really low too during this process. But afterwards, I got the PH and TA where it needed it to be, which I always battle and almost never get it there before (I did have to use a lot of acid to get it downat at first). it's holding now so far so good , what a relief. I think I also suffer from phoshate problems because I have a lot of bouganvillias in my yard and although I love them in an Arizona Mediterranean rock landscape, when it gets windy the purple leaves fill my pool. I just ordered the Taylor Phosphate test kit to keep a better eye on that too now. I can see that if one part of the balancing equation is off, it seems to me difficult to keep the others balanced too (pouring liquid chlorine straight into the pool all at one time based on the pool calculators I find contributes to the problems because it's harder to control levels not to mention going through a lot of chlorine and finding spots of yellow algae starting to form as it warms up here - a steady flow of liquid chlorine is much better IMO to stablize the level of chlorine the same way tablets do) . I have my Hasa liquid chlorine feeder tank hooked up and running now with my pump, chlorine level has stablized now. I run the pump twice a day; 4 hrs at night and 4 hours in early afternoon, so I'm getting a steady addition of chlorine around the clock (just have to figure out the right setting flow on the feeder and you're good to go). The water looks magnificent now. I'm a happy camper and so far glad I added the borates, but I'm going to hold off on putting the rest of the 10lbs I have remaining until I see how things go.