Calcium buildup on walls and floor

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Blue114

Blue114

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LifeTime Supporter
Aug 25, 2012
65
Brisbane , Australia
Hi,
I'm in Australia and have a quartzon pool. I have a lot of calcium stalamites coming from the walls and floor. The best way to get rid of them according to the manufacturers is to empty the pool and acid wash the whole area. The problem is that water in Brisbane is expensive and to refill would cost around $1500. Some one else told me to acidify the pool to below ph 6 and keep it that low for a week or more, scrubbing regularly.

Does anyone think this would work successfully?. Also I am worried I may damage some of the fittings with a low ph. Would also probably be best to turn off the filter while i do it.

Any feedback would be greatly appreciated
Brad
 
Welcome!

Calcium deposits are usually a sure sign of a high langelier index, many users have adjusted their water balance to around the -0.5 range until the calcium has dissipated, or adjusted their balance and ran with a pH around 7.2 to still allow swimming. One of our resident experts from memory stated that merely correcting the balance to what it should be will gradully correct calcium deposits.

Can you provide us with the following:
a full balanced water test result including pH, TA, CH, Temp, (FC, CC, CYA, TDS) figures in brackets are not as important.
Your primary source of disinfection, and source of shock disinfection

Draining and acid washing your pool is generally not necessary, as is dropping pH to 6.0, I would never recommend these practices and I doubt anyone else would on this forum.

Can you also edit your signature As detailed here: pool-school/read_before_you_post

Regards
Stuart
 
Thanks Stuart,

The water will not be reading well atm . I have turned off the salt chlorinator for 4 weeks now .

PH 6.8
TA 40
Total Chlorine 3
Total Hardness 500
Free Chlorine 3
Total Bromine 5
Cyan acid 0 or less
Temp is 14 c or 57 F

Thanks
Brad
 
Blue114 said:
The water will not be reading well atm . I have turned off the salt chlorinator for 4 weeks now .
Click to expand...
Where is the chlorine in the pool coming from while the SWG is off?

Blue114 said:
PH 6.8
TA 40
Total Chlorine 3
Total Hardness 500
Free Chlorine 3.
Total Bromine 5 :?: Do you have bromine or chlorine? I assume chlorine. The bromine scale on the test only applies with Bromine
Cyan acid 0 or less :shock: too low. Your FC should be rapidly consumed by sunlight!
Temp is 14 c or 57 F :| chilly
Click to expand...

The CYA is too low unless this is an indoor pool. pH is very low which as I recall was the direction you were thinking about to dissolve the deposits. However since most pH tests "bottom out" @ 6.8 - it could be lower. Do you have any readings for what your values were when this started? How are you testing?

At your current numbers you have a CSI of just under -1 which can cause problems.
 
Hi

Thanks for the replies. I'm not sure of my readings before I stopped the chlorinator as I always get my pool tested at the pool shop and they tell me what to put in. I am not putting any chlorine in the pool and the high reading is still residual chlorine from 4 weeks ago. (must have been too high then ) . The pool shop person wants me to lose all the chlorine so the acid works more efficiently when I bomb it. It's winter here and we are not using the pool ATM.
Probably best to run my results after I lower the Ph then try to bring it back to normal
Thanks. Brad
 
Thanks for your replies.

It's an outdoor pool but we are in winter here and haven't used the pool for 4 months.

I actually had the rep from the pool surface manufacturers come and have a look at the calcium on the walls and she gave me a guidelines brochure on how to acid bath the pool.

Believe it or not I have added 80 litres (21 gallons ) of muriatic acid to the pool and a lot of the scale has disappeared already after 16 hours. I check it at 24 hrs. and if it seems cleaned , I then vacuum the pool on waste removing all the sediment to the drain .If not yet cleaned I leave it again for another 24 hrs. and do the same . I am also brushing every couple of hours to help remove the scale. The less time I leave the pool acidic the better as it eats into the surface. :)

Once I've vacuumed , I then drop the water level 1 foot and refill and start to balance the water again.

That's the story so far. thanks .. Brad
 
Hi,
I have cleaned the walls and floor and they look good. I emptied 70% or the pool and refilled. Vacuumed on waste to remove most of the sediment in the bottom and on the walls and have added my chemicals . Had the filter going now for nearly 3 days.

CH 230
TC 2
FC 2
PH 7.4
TA 100
CA 30

My only concern is that the pool still looks dull and cloudy. Does this seem a normal time frame to get the water back to looking good. Also, I was wondering if I should replace the sand in the filter as we have been here for 4 years and it may not have been done by the previous owners. It seemed to be working OK before i emptied the pool.

Cheers
Brad
 

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Minimum FC level for 40 CYA is 3ppm, so you need to raise that. Given your pools cloudiness I would be shocking the pool, which would be 16ppm for your CYA level At the mo, and running an overnight chlorine loss test. Unless there are any specific instructions from your pool rep on the matter.
You should read the following Chlorine/CYA Relationship advice: pool-school/chlorine_cya_chart_shock

All your other numbers are looking healthy, although Pool School does recommend a TA level of 60-80 for SWG pools.

As for the sand filter, it may be worthwhile doing the hose overflow clean as described in "Pool Filter Comparisons" in Pool School, sand can usually go a long long time (sorry I can't remember how long it's recommended over here) before requiring replacement. pool-school/pool_filter_comparison.

Glad to hear you got your problem sorted out!

Regards
Stuart
 
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