CH level high, but in no position to empty pool

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nicpppardo

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Apr 4, 2013
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Hi Everyone!

We just bought a house with our first pool one year ago and, because it was our first, we hired a pool guy. Now, I have just fired him for multiple reasons and am attempting to do this on my own. I live in Southern California where the water is extremely hard- need a new coffee maker every year kind of hard. Before my pool guy left last week, he bumped up my SWG to 80% and my TA is very high. Once this happened (or once I noticed), there were calcium deposits along the floor of our pool and also floating around- they disappear/disintegrate when you touch them. They look like white flakes. I am hoping to get rid of those and fix my water chemistry balance. Any help on what I can do would be great! Right now, I am running our pump on high for 5 hrs and on low for 2. I put the SWG back down to 50% and have a 13,000 gallon pool with a DE filter. Below are my numbers (taken from my Taylor k-2006 test kit).

FC: 6.5 (too high, but assuming that has to do with the way they cranked up my SWG)
CC: 0
TA: 120
pH: 7.8 (it was at 8.0, but I have been adding a quart of muriatic acid daily)
CH: 960 (did this test three times)
CYA: 50 ( my pool guy NEVER added this before, so I did it for the first time in liquid form 3 days ago). From reading the posts here, I see a good range for SWG is 70-80. How much more Conditioner would I need to add?

With the cost of water out here, I am not in a position right now to empty my pool. If I get these chemicals right, can I control the hardness or learn to manage it? Or is my only way to empty the pool at least a little bit? I'd like to try everything I can with water chemistry first.

Thanks for your help in advance!!
 
Thank you! What TA number should I strive for? And if by lowering the TA via acid and my pH gets too low, should I just aerate to raise it?

Thanks for your quick reply! Wish I would have found this forum sooner!
 
I answered in a hurry yesterday. :( but JB has you covered. :)

Since you're not in a position to drain water I'd suggest you read Richard320's CH saga. He's the guru of high CH and some of his fixes might be worth you trying.
 
Thank you all! I read up on Richard 320's saga and I can relate. I wish we had (any) rain coming our way! I am working on getting the TA down and will follow up on here with my new numbers to see if I am on the right track. Again, I cannot thank this group enough!

One last thing... this was brought to my attention when I had to go to the pool store to get my own chemicals, and I was hoping I could get your thoughts.... "Ultimate Scale & Stain Remover" It is sold at Leslie's pools and claims it cleans up calcium stains. Is this true? Is it safe to use? Will it effect my other chemicals? I definitely have calcium stains on my pool- they are no rough or raised, but it's definitely obvious.

Thank you!
 
One other thing, if you are in southern California then reverse osmosis water treatment may be an option if available in your area, and it may cost a little less than water replacement.

Ike

p.s. Reverse osmosis pool treatment is available in a few locations in the U.S. mostly they are areas with high CH and expensive water along with high enough population density to support the business. southern California is one of those areas, if available I would suggest prices with multiple companies if possible. I recall one message thread a couple of years ago (I think it was someone in Phoenix) where he had prices from 2 RO services and one quote was more than double the other one.
 
Hi Isaac!

Thanks for that information. I had never heard of that before. I just looked up Pool Services Technologies, Inc. I may give them a call to see pricing. CH is way too high to ignore and hope for rain :)
 
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