Calcium hardness "staining"

[nicpppardo]

Hello all! Question for you... I have been working hard to lower my CH level with partial drains (started with 1100 and now around 750). However, because the chemicals were out of whack with our pool guy for so long, the CH left white on the entire pool. You can see distinct locations where the pool is a blue color, but it is mostly a white-over-blue color. It is more of an ascetics thing than a problem, but I was wondering if there was a way to remove the (pretty permanent) white CH stains without doing a full drain/acid wash? Wasn't sure if there were any solutions out there! Below are my pool numbers as of today, for reference.

pH: 7.4
TA: 70
CYA: 30 (still working on partial drains, so I'll add more once I'm done)
FC: 5
CC: 0
CH: 750
SAlt: 3400


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[Richard320]

Re: Calcium hardness

Post a picture.

I thought I had white splotches, turns out the pool is white, the rest was scaling.

The long - I'm talking years - solution is to maintain a negative CSI by carefully maintaining pH and TA at low levels, and trust me, it gets hard when CH gets that high.

 

[nicpppardo]

Will post pics in the morning! Thanks.


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[257WbyMag]

Re: Calcium hardness

Yes, show us pictures when you can.

The calcium scaling that I have seen has not been white. It has been grayish to yellowish.

 

[nicpppardo]

Hey everyone! Picture one is of the blue area that you can see in the pool. Picture two is the white and picture three is some yellowing type stain where the floor meets the wall. Thank you for taking a look! I did this from my phone so let me know if you can't see it!

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[Richard320]

Re: Calcium hardness

Those pictures are too small for me to see clearly. Try opening an account at webshots or flickr or one of the others and load some bigger ones.

Also, I find the best time to take pool pictures is early in the morning, before the sun hits the pool, there's no wind, and no ripples from the pump.

Just out of curiosity, does it sort of look like this:

The grey is the stain...the white is the plaster color.

 

[nicpppardo]

Are these pictures better?? Let me know! Thank you!


[attachment=1:2brzim77]ImageUploadedByTapatalk1367111729.820705.jpg[/attachment:2brzim77][attachment=0:2brzim77]ImageUploadedByTapatalk1367111749.787398.jpg[/attachment:2brzim77]


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[Richard320]

Re: Calcium hardness

From the pictures, it looks like you have the same condition I have. It looks much worse when shaded; under full sunlight it almost disappears. Sound familiar?

I believe
1) Someone did a lousy job replastering for the previous owner,
2) The previous owner and his pool service didn't brush the new finish like they should have,
3) They didn't maintain pH and the fill water here is really high in Calcium

The darker areas on mine are the Calcium. If you want it all gone at once, an acid wash is in your future. Or maintain negative CSI (Pool Calculator will give it to you) and faithfully brush with a stainless steel brush. I figure two years down, two more to go and my whole pool will be gleaming white.

 

[nicpppardo]

Wow ok- I am glad you know what I'm going through! We're in Southern California and our fill water has a hardness of 250, so it's high to begin with. When I took over our pool maintenance, the pH and TA were staying way too high (8.0 and 130). The pool was just built about 3 years ago from the previous owners, so I think this neglect made the CH go above 1000 and we had tons of white flakes in the pool before I started doing the chemicals myself (and the only reason I was able to do that was because of your guys!). To stay in a negative CSI... How low can I let my pH and TA safely go? Since you seem to have/had the same hard water issue, what do you consider to be a reasonable level of hardness, since I'll never be able to keep up with a low of 400! Haha

Thank you very much!


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[Richard320]

Re: Calcium hardness

Play with http://www.poolcalculator.com/ Plug some numbers in, see what CSI is, then change a few around and see what happens.

I keep TA down between 50-60; it rises when I top off the water.
pH is kept between 7,2 and 7.5
When CH gets above 800, it starts getting difficult to maintain CSI
When temperature rises it also pushes CSI positive, and you can't control that one, so it's good to know when the water is really heating up. My CH goes up about 25/week during the summer. A cover would slow the evaporation, but I found it a huge nuisance to remove it every time someone wanted to go in.

Winter is the best time to attack it, since no one's swimming and the cooler water makes it easier to keep CSI negative. I pretty much forget about reducing it during the summer and try to just keep it from getting worse.

If you have a hose bib on your return line somewhere, it's a handy way to drain off water and use it to water the lawns. Then the water you would have put in the lawn goes in the pool. Although you have a SWG, and I don't know if that's too high a salt level for grass. Otherwise, a submersible pump is your friend.

 

[nicpppardo]

THank you very much! We bought a submersible pump and I will try to play with the negative CSI for now while swim season is still a month or so away! Once it gets 100+ outside, I will do as you said- just try to stop it from getting worse! Thanks!


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