Lowering TA after Borates have been added?

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frankgh

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Dec 20, 2007
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Navarre FL
It has been said here that it is harder to lower TA after Borates have been added. I lowered my TA to 70 then added the 20 Mule team/MA. It has been a couple weeks and my TA is now reading 100 on both the pool stores testing and my Taylor kit. We did have to add about 3 inches of fill water. The water from the tap has a TA of 200. My PH is still drifing up from 7.6 to 8.0 in about 3 days and even with all the added MA (2 quarts evert 3 days) the TA is locked at 100.

BTW, I did order a TF test kit and an Apollo stirrer yesterday. I'm looking forward to using them!
 
The TA is not locked. It will move if you add enough acid. Realize that dropping the pH by .5 (say fro 8.0 to 7.5) only drops the TA by about 8 ppm, which is less than the resolution of the TA test (+/- 10 ppm) so you would very probably not see that small change show up on testing unless you did it over and over and over and you sped up the process of getting the ph to rise by aerating the water...Oh , wait a minute....that IS how we lower TA! :-D
how-to-lower-ta-t5341.html

Get your TA down to about 70 ppm.

BTW, where is your CYA? If it is lower than 80 ppm that is also contributing indirectly to your pH rise
water-balance-tips-for-a-swg-t3663.html

Also, how new is your pool? If the plaster is less than a year old you will have a big acid demand no matter what you do. All you can do is minimize it the most that you can by following all these tips. Once the pool is older the pool will not consume as much acid.
 
I hear what you are saying and would love to get the TA lower but with a Gallon of MA added this week, TA is still at 100, where it was last week when we topped off the pool. It should have dropped about 16ppm or so I think but has not moved.

I originally lowered the TA with the info from the link you quoted. The pool is 1.5 years young and CYA is 70. FC/TC is 2.0

What do folks here mean "harder to lower TA after borates have been added"? Because, I think I'm seeing it, TA does not look like it wants to move at all right now. The only up side I have found with this is my local Ace hardware is selling MA for $3.76.

I think I'll let the PH climb to 8 then lower it to 7.0 and try to take a larger bite out of the TA.

Opinions?

Oh, and Thanks in advance! I love this website!
 
frankgh said:
What do folks here mean "harder to lower TA after borates have been added"?
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In theory, the borates just mean that it takes more acid to lower the pH down to 7.0 where you can then aerate, have the pH rise, and add more acid. The rate of pH rise from the aeration will also be slower due to the borates. That is, borates are an additional pH buffer requiring more effort to move pH.

However, the amount the TA gets lowered should only be a function of the amount of acid that gets added. So the harder part of the process is that it takes more acid to lower the pH and a longer time for aeration to raise the pH. There shouldn't be any difference or difficulty in how much the TA drops from a quantity of acid addition. The difficulty is if you have to lower the TA by a lot, then the process "seems" slower because the pH doesn't move very easily -- but in practice I think the amount the TA should drop takes about the same amount of time to occur.

It's possible the borates somehow interfere with the carbon dioxide outgassing and if that happens then this would make the TA lowering procedure take longer. It would also explain how some people say their pH is not only more stable with borates (which makes sense), but that the amount of acid addition over time is cumulatively lower (which doesn't make sense unless the borates affected the outgassing).

Richard
 
frankgh said:
It is 9:30 AM here and the heat index is 105 already...
Hope you are in the pool already! Im headed that way now!
Thanks for the explanation Richard. That is what I thought but I ain't no expert so I was asking you folks here.
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We're not experts either, We just play one on the internet! :mrgreen:
 
Ok, PH was up to 7.9 today so I thought I'd take a bite out of the TA and added 1.25 gal MA. Here are my numbers an hour later:

FC 2
TC 2
PH 7
CH 305
TA 70
CYA 70
Salt 3400
temp 94

CSI per Pool Calc -.79

Here is my next question;

If I am shooting for a TA of 50-60, and a PH of 7.7, all other factors being even I would have a CSI of -.56, a very low number. Even bringing CH up to 400 would only give me a CSI of -.45. A CH of 600 brings CSI to -.28 but do I really want CH that high? Do I really want TA that low? I'm I reading too much into CSI?
:scratch:
 
You are reading WAY too much into the CSI. If you want to bring it up bring the pH up to about 7.8. pH is going to have the biggest impact on changing the CSI, temperature the second.Temerparture is something you often do not have much control over, however. Bottom line, if you keep your pool in the recommened ranges you will be fine.
 

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frankgh said:
I am not to worried about CSI anymore but I am wondering how long this headache from such technical reading will last! :-D

Thanks All!
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they usually last a few hours. Best bet is to NOT read anything where the only contributors are JasonLion, chem geek, and myself!
You are not alone. This was one of the responses in a thread on TA between chem geek and myself
EskimoPie said:
Ouch... my brain hurts now.
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:lol: :lol: :lol:
 
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