Where to buy borax

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JoyfulNoise said:
Boric acid works the same as Borax/MA for adding borates to pool water BUT boric acid is much, much easier to work with and well worth any cost differential. Borax is a strong(ish) base and will raise pH dramatically upon addition. This is why you must add muriatic acid to compensate. Eventually you balance the two but, in the process you create both borate ions in water and lots of excess salt. Boric acid, by contrast, is a weak acid and even with the full 50ppm addition (~40+ lbs for a typical pool volume), the pH will only go down by around 0.3 units. Boric acid also dissolves very rapidly in water and will not cause calcium scale or water cloudiness as borax will.

You can do the calculations on Pool Math but, roughly speaking, adding the full measure of borates using boric acid lowers the pH by 0.3 units. Adding 1/10 th the amount of borax needed to get to 50ppm raises the pH by nearly 0.9 units and thus requires MA to knock it back down. So, you can add all of the boric acid at once OR you can add the borax in 10 batches with MA additions in between.

By far, the boric acid method is a lot easier...
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+1!

The ease of using boric acid makes it well worth the extra cost (if any) IMO.

Frankly, I don't understand why anyone would go the borax/MA route, unless you need to raise pH.
 
No kidding!

I was (again) investigating adding borates to my pool just the other day. Calculated I would need 13 boxes of 20 mule team at $4 per box plus 3.5 gallons of muratic acid at around $8 each locally. I can get boric acid from the online source listed above and shipped for about $75, have almost twice as much as needed and not even mess with trying to correct the PH.

Think the original so you want to add borates post needs updated! I mean seriously who is going to read through 29 pages to find near the end that you could just use boric acid instead?

I looked at the Proteam supreme pool stuff at over $150 and almost ordered it just to save the effort and the pile of empty boxes and bottles.
 
I added the granules, could not of been simpler and did not have to add a ounce of acid.



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I was able to get my MA for $4 per gallon and my boxes of Borax at walmart for just under $4 if I recall correctly. It came out a little cheaper than ordering the big bucket from duda diesel, and I didn't have to wait for shipping, so I figured why not, right?

In the future, I will use boric acid. the ph swings you get in local areas of your pool when you dump in a bunch of borax and then acid behind it caused calcium to precipitate and clog up my sand filter overnight. Plus it was definitely more work using borax/ma.

Moral of the story is even if you can get borax and MA cheaper than the boric acid, you still are better off getting the boric acid.
 
Just a note - borax and boric acid are not the same thing. They do the same thing - add borates to your water - but do so very differently. Borax is a strong base and will raise pH a lot; it requires muriatic acid to be used to offset the pH rise. Boric acid, by contrast, is a weak acid that doesn't drop pH much at all and so it can be applied directly without any other additives.


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JoyfulNoise said:
Just a note - borax and boric acid are not the same thing. They do the same thing - add borates to your water - but do so very differently. Borax is a strong base and will raise pH a lot; it requires muriatic acid to be used to offset the pH rise. Boric acid, by contrast, is a weak acid that doesn't drop pH much at all and so it can be applied directly without any other additives.


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I was out and didn't see the replies and went ahead and got the Mule Team Borax - so with this I would likely have to add acid after re-testing?
 

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JuYuHu said:
I was out and didn't see the replies and went ahead and got the Mule Team Borax - so with this I would likely have to add acid after re-testing?
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There is a specific process for adding borax and acid. PoolMath will calculate the amounts needed of both borax and MA in order to raise the borates from 0 to 50ppm. You then need to add the borax and acid in small batches (I would suggest a minimum of four batches to avoid water clouding and calcium scaling). Start by lowering your pH to 7.2 and then add the first batch of borax. Pre-dilute the borax in a 5 gallon bucket of water and broadcast around the pool. Brush vigorously to get the borax to dissolve. Wait 15mins or so for the pump to circulate the water then add a dose of acid. Brush again to mix. Wait about 30mins then test pH. If your pH is within range (7-8) then repeat the process until the borax and acid are all gone. If your pH is too high or too low, you'll want to break the borax up into smaller batches.

You want to avoid spiking the pH as much as possible or else you will cause calcium scaling. So make sure you test pH to get a feel for how your pH reacts.


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JuYuHu said:
I was out and didn't see the replies and went ahead and got the Mule Team Borax - so with this I would likely have to add acid after re-testing?
Click to expand...

Can you return it? That would be the easiest. Boric acid is a much simpler application. At least in my case it was, I fight the pH enough as it is.....


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