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If you are lucky enough to find your pool's pH being stable at the current TA, then of course there's no need to change it. If you do find the pH to rise over time too quickly for you, then you can add acid which will lower both the pH and over time the TA should drop (unless you've got a lot...

When I used the 8.5 pH example, that wasn't for your pool pH but rather the pH at the SWCG hydrogen gas generation plate. Without borates, it could be that high of higher there and therefore you seem to be on the edge of getting calcium phosphate scaling in the SWCG cell. Probably best to...

It cuts the pH rise associated with the hydrogen gas production roughly in half. It does not change the hydrogen gas production itself. The same amount of hydrogen gas is produced as without borates. The borates are just a pH buffer that have the pH rise about half as much. The following...

I don't know how they are testing for salinity. They might be using conductivity and then assuming a certain combination of ions. Or they could be doing the same salt test that we use for pools which is a chloride test. The fact that the result is reported as ppm sodium chloride does NOT mean...

They are using the ozone as a crutch to try and kill algae that is free-floating given that the CYA will rise with continued use of Trichlor. That won't help with algae growing on surfaces or that otherwise doesn't get circulated unless enough ozone is produced to leave some residual and that...

If you are using 50 ppm Borates then that makes a big difference since it cuts down the amount of pH rise at the hydrogen gas generation plate by about half due to the strong pH buffering of the borates as the pH gets higher.

Are you using full-strength Muriatic Acid (31.45% Hydrochloric Acid)? If so, then one gallon in 18,000 gallons of pool water will lower the TA by 28 ppm which is substantial. 42+32=74 ounces weight of sodium bicarbonate should have increased the TA by 18 ppm but given the amount of acid you've...

The problem with the Trichlor pucks is that the CYA level increases over time. Don't forget that you need to add the cost of the pH Up adjustment chemical and when you do that you should find that your Trichlor pucks are not much different in price than chlorinating liquid or bleach. Since you...

Pools are intentionally over-carbonated to provide pH buffering and to protect plaster surfaces, providing carbonate. You add calcium to the pool and the combination of calcium and carbonate saturates the water to prevent dissolving of calcium carbonate from plaster surfaces. So the carbon...

As I'm sure you've figured out by now, there's a lot of advice from "pool pros" and the pool and spa industry in general that is either just plain wrong or not the best advice. The industry doesn't look at the fundamental chemistry of what is going on, especially when doing so would conflict...

Yes, but you can't have things like aluminum tracks on coping for pool covers due to splash-out, but that has little to do with being indoors. Outdoor pools would have the same problems unless they get regular summer rains to dilute the splashed-out salt. CYA is essential in an indoor pool...

Because CH is easy to increase and harder to decrease (i.e. you have to dilute the water), you should try the lower TA first to see if it helps and if it does then you can increase the CH to balance the CSI.

Yes, even out of sunlight the bleach will degrade because of the temperature. The degradation in the chart is from temperature alone. Not from sunlight exposure. You should have direct sunlight on the chlorine under any circumstances so if the tank is not shaded it should definitely be opaque.

Insulation won't keep it any colder in the long term (but keep reading...). It will eventually get to the average day/night temperature though the good news is that it won't get to the high day temperature so in that sense it could help. So instead of being equivalent to an 86ºF temperature...

So you definitely want to shade the containers if at all possible. If you can't shade them, then they should be painted reflective white so that they don't absorb heat from the sun (but shade is better). According to the Saugus, CA historical averages, August is the hottest averaging 95ºF days...

It's the higher CYA level of 80 ppm that cuts down on chlorine loss from sunlight and lets you turn down the SWG % ontime. The use of 50 ppm Borates just adds additional pH buffering so that the rate of pH rise is slower though it shouldn't reduce the total amount of acid that you need to add...

The higher CYA is only needed if the pool is exposed to sunlight. So if you have a pool that is always shaded, then you don't need the 80 ppm CYA for the SWG. Indoor pools with an SWG can have a low 20-30 ppm CYA, for example. When there is sunlight, the savings from the higher CYA level...

Congratulations. I'm so glad it all worked out OK.

If you look at Figure 5 on page 3 in this link, a person's arm was put into a 30 liter (about 8 gallons) water tank with around 4 ppm FC (with no CYA) and in the graph the arm was put in at the 30 minute mark and immediately chloroform concentrations rose. The rate of chloroform production...

The answer to this is already in this thread: This is a small Intex pool, not an in-ground pool put in by a contractor. It did not have CYA added to it because it was going to be covered and the thought was that CYA wasn't needed because the cover would keep out sunlight. Since salt was...

That is not the test kit you need. It only tests for chlorine, Total Alkalinity (TA), and pH. The chlorine test is an OTO test which is the least accurate (the FAS-DPD test is much better). The test kits we recommend are either the TFTestkits TF-100 or the Taylor K-2006 which are compared in...

Well with the strips it's hard to know since they are reporting inconsistent results. The 1:1 dilution showed >10 ppm which means the FC would be >20 ppm, but the 1:2 dilution showed 5 ppm which means the FC would be 15 ppm. The bigger problem is that you never added any CYA to the water so...

Absolute Ozone has ozone generators and oxygen sources or concentrators (purifying and drying oxygen), but these are for industrial use and commercial/public pools. The smallest unit (Nano) runs around $2345 but outputs 15 grams/hour (with the oxygen concentrator for another $1500) whereas...

For your low spa usage and not being able to have the ozonator only for the spa water, it's not worth it.

As noted in Chemistries of Ozone for Municipal Pool and Spa Water Treatment, ozone reacts with chlorine to produce chloride and chlorate salts thereby depleting chlorine. So in low bather-load situations the use of ozone actually increases chlorine demand. This is most noticeable in spas where...

Increased aeration will outgas anything that is over-saturated in the water so that includes both carbon dioxide as well as hydrogen gas. Basically, the hydrogen gas bubbles from the SWCG are pure hydrogen gas so they will slowly transfer (dissolve) into the water at full saturation level...

See ORP Control. The problem is related to your use of saltwater chlorine generators. What is the location of your ORP system? If your generator, which outputs hydrogen gas bubbles, goes out a return too close to a skimmer or gutter returning water back to your equipment pad where your ORP is...

See Probe Failing; Current in the Water; Bonding Issue? where another user is having trouble with getting their ORP to work, but even worse than yours since theirs never works -- it almost immediately goes bad. Have you figured anything out since you last wrote? Please keep us posted since...

This is no longer true, at least not for harvesting rainwater falling on your property, such as that from your roof collected through gutters. See this link for the legal change in 2012. Even before this legal change, you could still have used the water from your roof legally if you obtained a...

Yes that is correct that the chlorine production rate is constant when the SWCG is on which means that the higher the flow rate the lower the ppm increase in the return water. You can figure the expected increase in ppm of the return water by dividing the 24-hour production rate in ppm FC for...