2 borates questions!

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J

JenfromNC

Gold Supporter
Jul 14, 2019
57
Hickory, NC
Pool Size
21000
Surface
Fiberglass
Chlorine
Salt Water Generator
SWG Type
Hayward Turbo Cell (T-CELL-5)
i can’t get my TA to drop down to 70. its just sticking hard at 80. I’ve added acid and aerated a couple of times but it is sticking 80. is 80 close enough or do i absolutely need to hit 70 before adding borates? I’m not having any pH issues (i don’t think. I’m new at this. I haven’t added acid for pH yet, just in trying to lower TA)

i used pool math to calculate how much to add. I bought the technical granular from Duda diesel. In bags cause they were out of buckets.
My pool is 21000 gallons. To get my borates to 50 i need 50 pounds of boric acid. I did this right, right?
61257352-75EB-47D7-AC6F-31CBE12378DA.png
if I’m good to go with 80 TA and 50 pounds of boric acid… do i legit just put all 50 pounds in at once? Or a bag a day? Or?
 
JenfromNC said:
i can’t get my TA to drop down to 70. its just sticking hard at 80. I’ve added acid and aerated a couple of times but it is sticking 80. is 80 close enough or do i absolutely need to hit 70 before adding borates? I’m not having any pH issues (i don’t think. I’m new at this. I haven’t added acid for pH yet, just in trying to lower TA)

i used pool math to calculate how much to add. I bought the technical granular from Duda diesel. In bags cause they were out of buckets.
My pool is 21000 gallons. To get my borates to 50 i need 50 pounds of boric acid. I did this right, right?
View attachment 346494
if I’m good to go with 80 TA and 50 pounds of boric acid… do i legit just put all 50 pounds in at once? Or a bag a day? Or?
Click to expand...
Creep up on adding the boric acid. I found that I must have had some already in the water cause the test strip says I’m at 30ppm but I only added enough to get me to ~15ish. The test strips also may also have a large tolerance on accuracy.

I think the TA issue is really related to where you want the CSI to be. If TA=80 works well with where your pH likes to be then it may be ok to stay at 80, but I’ve read it’s hard to get it lower after adding borates. In fact, mine when up after adding boric acid.
 
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Oh, i didn’t think about testing for the borates before adding. It’s a brand new pool, so i wouldn’t expect it be in there, but as i don’t know what it actually is or really comes from, i guess it could be! :ROFLMAO:

Don’t really know what CSI is. its a calcium thing, right? I haven’t dived into the calcium thing yet as i have fiberglass and it didn’t seem urgent. I need to get that higher too.
 
If you ever used Borax to raise either pH or TA you are going to have borates in the water.

My TA was somewhere between 80 and 90 when I added Boric Acid. I had no issues whatsoever. Sure, my pH drifts up and I expect to have to add acid every 2-3 weeks.

TA has quite some impact on CSI. As long as your CSI is OK you don’t need to worry about TA. The solution to lower TA and to deal with the impacts of a high TA is the same.
 
JenfromNC said:
Oh, i didn’t think about testing for the borates before adding. It’s a brand new pool, so i wouldn’t expect it be in there, but as i don’t know what it actually is or really comes from, i guess it could be! :ROFLMAO:

Don’t really know what CSI is. its a calcium thing, right? I haven’t dived into the calcium thing yet as i have fiberglass and it didn’t seem urgent. I need to get that higher too.
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Take a look at your CSI in the log. It generally needs to stay in the range of -0.6 to 0.6. Yours has been pretty low, I assume because you’re lowering the TA. Closer to zero on the negative side is best so avoid scaling in your saltwater generator and other equipment. If you’re not sure, I’d ask why you want to add borates. It’s certainly not necessary. The only reason I’m trying it is to slow down the pH rise in my water so I don’t have to add acid as frequently and keep the CSI more stable (Used to add acid every 3 days)
 
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The pool is brand new, so i haven’t had to raise pH at all. I personally haven’t added anything that would have raised borates, but I’m not sure what all the PB people dumped in it before i took it over.

i was reading the borates could help keep the SWG clean, and it seemed like an easy enough thing to do, so i figured why not. I don’t really understand CSI yet. it wasn’t in the basic pool school stuff and i didn’t find it in the app until recently. i think mine is low because my calcium is still low, but I’m not sure. There’s so many little rabbit holes of information to dive into that i just haven’t hit that one yet. Off to look now.
 
JenfromNC said:
The pool is brand new, so i haven’t had to raise pH at all. I personally haven’t added anything that would have raised borates, but I’m not sure what all the PB people dumped in it before i took it over.

i was reading the borates could help keep the SWG clean, and it seemed like an easy enough thing to do, so i figured why not. I don’t really understand CSI yet. it wasn’t in the basic pool school stuff and i didn’t find it in the app until recently. i think mine is low because my calcium is still low, but I’m not sure. There’s so many little rabbit holes of information to dive into that i just haven’t hit that one yet. Off to look now.
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You might spend some time with the pool as-is and see how it goes. One of my issues is that my CSI tends to creep over 0 if I don’t keep the pH at 7.8 or less. When that happens, the SWG can start to scale up and I found my water was a bit cloudy, until I dropped the pH back down every few days. I’m seeing if the borates will help extend the every few days additions to a week or two.
 
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