Lowering PH without lowering TA

[crookm11]

Hi everyone,

Question for all the pool gurus

I will be adding a fountain to my Intex pool here shortly and I know from reading the forum that if you run any type of water features the PH will rise. Can you lower the PH without lowering the TA? I have read that you use acid to lower your TA and then aerate the pool to bring the PH back up. If I don't want to lower my TA just my PH how would someone do that? I ask this question because my kids are going to want the fountain on alot and I want to keep my PH consistant as posible. I know I should post my pool numbers and I will as soon as my TFtestkit-100 gets here tomorrow.

Thanks, Mark

 

[svenpup]

The short answer is no, you can't lower pH without lowering TA.

The full answer is a little more complicated. You actually want to keep TA lower because pH will rise faster with higher TA.

Of course there are issues with maintaining low TA:

• less pH buffering which can lead to wild pH swings[/*:m:gb5v77dr]
• lower CSI would could be corrosive to plaster (depending on CH, etc).[/*:m:gb5v77dr]

Since you don't have plaster the CSI issue isn't a concern.

You could keep TA around 50-60 and to help with buffering the pH you could add 30-50ppm borates.

Also, maintaining pH around 7.8 rather than trying to keep it lower will make this easier to manage.

Your rising pH will exasperated by your SWCG.