What would you do?

[rclifton]

Hi All,

I've been lurking since around September when I picked up an Intext 15'x48" round metal frame pool on closeout for my kids for Christmas. I've been reading here since then trying to get familiar with everything as this will be my first pool. My plan was to set the pool up sometime within the next month and add an Intex sand filter as well as an Intex SWG.

Now for my dilemma and the reason for my post. I live in Northern California with no hope for city water anytime in the forseeable future and trucking water in is prohibitively expensive which leaves me with filling the pool with water from my well. I purchased one of the 6-way tests from Walmart just to get a baseline for my water quality as I knew I had very hard water. The results of the 6-way test are below:

PH 7.2
Total Alkalinity 380
Total Hardness 1200

As you can see I've got some really bad water, although I'm not sure how accurate the hardness test actually is because when I did the initial 5 drops of Hardness Indicator it turned a dark purple instead of the red the test says it should turn. I then read this may be caused by interference with any metal ions present in the water and I should redo the test and add something to prevent this interference but, the 6-way test comes with nothing to do that. For what it's worth when I had my water softener installed my water tested 93grains hard and was positive for Iron and Manganese.

Now for the question. What would you do? Would you bother setting up a pool with the above water quality if it was pretty much your only choice for both fill and top off water? Is it possible to get the water under control with some work? I'm at home all day anyway so I have the time if that's what it would take. I also plan on buying a much better test kit if the knowledgable folks here think it's doable, just don't want to throw money away if this is going to be a losing battle.

Thanks for any and all advice/suggestions!

 

[duraleigh]

I think probably the first thing is to test your well for iron and manganese with a reputable swimming pool company. A water softener company would REALLY want your water to test positive for those two things. :lol:

Total hardness is not the right test....you need to test for Calcium Hardness....you can actually deal with pretty high levels.

TA is easy enough to resolve but it will take a lot of Acid

How much cost to truck in water? If your iron is over .2ppm, it may well (no pun intended) be worth it.

Once filled, you could probably top off with the softened water.

 

[257WbyMag]

We actually have hundreds, if not thousands of people on here who operate pools filled with well water. We also have a large contingent of people here who operate pools using fill water where the CH of their fill water is higher than most CH levels of people's pools. As duraleigh said, it can be done. Sequestrants can be used to isolate metal ions from being functional in your pool water. In order to use them though, you need to know what metals and how much of whatever metal it is that you are dealing with. Once you find this information out, you can deal with the problem.