Yellow pH with Red TA

[teamhurtado]

I was under the impression that our PB had transferred complete control of our remodel back to us for chemical balancing. I came home today with the following results:

FC 1.5
CC 0.0
pH - Yellow
TA - 0 (no green color)

I pushed some baking soda to raise TA first since I'll see a bit of a raise in pH. After dumping baking soda, my wife informed me that the PB was here this morning. We're not sure what was done to the pool. I suspect they dumped additional acid without testing the water as I was perfectly balanced on Sunday. Thoughts? The TA test is confusing me as I had 80 ppm on Sunday but can't get a green color to the test sample.

 

[Bama Rambler]

I'd give them a call and find out what they did and are doing.

 

[Richard320]

I suspect you're right - they'll do that.

I started tending to my chemistry before I actually fired the pool service. One day I happened to be off when the girl arrived. I had tested and treated things a few hours earlier, so I knew it was perfect. I let her do her vacuuming and stuff. When I went out to say hi, she told me the water looked "pretty good" and all she had to add was a quart of acid. So after she left, I checked, and I was down to 7.0 pH! Just one of the many reasons I fired the pool service.

 

[JasonLion]

Your PH is extremely low, which suggests the builder is doing an acid start.

If the plaster/pebble was applied in the last week or two you do not want to adjust TA or CH manually. As the plaster cures it will bring up the TA and CH levels. If you raise them now, they could easily end up too high.

 

[teamhurtado]

I'll have to call Friday as they're gone for the rest of the day due to rain and holiday. We were planning on swimming tomorrow but if I can't get a read on the pH it may not be safe to jump in. This is why I didn't want them to do a chemical start up but had no choice due to warranty requirements.

Pool was plastered last week. I noticed CH was climbing ever so slowly so I didn't tinker with it. CYA has been rising over the last week as expected. The red TA reading was odd as we were holding TA around 80. I did notice pH was jumping wildly which is expected with the new aggregate so I kept that in check around 7.2. Grrrr.....

Thanks all!

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[teamhurtado]

After dumping about 4 lbs of baking soda, TA now registers 40. Makes sense that they dropped pH way down due to loss of TA. pH test still yellow though. I'm tempted to throw some Borax in tomorrow just so that we can use the pool, then report to the PB Friday.

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[JasonLion]

If they are doing an acid start, you are messing up their process, which will have undesirable results.

How long ago was the plaster applied?

 

[teamhurtado]

It was applied last Monday. They performed what looked like an acid wash with wands the same day. On Wednesday, they came out and acid washed with a sprayer and began the fill process. Thursday and Friday the PB came out and balanced. Those two evenings I ran all TFT tests and found that they held pH at 7.2. My impression after last Friday was that the pool was our responsibility. I was totally not expecting them back out at all. That's where my confusion lies. Even with an acid start, would you expect the pH to be under 6.8?

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[JasonLion]

During an acid start the PH goes very very low, down around 3 or 4.

It sounds like there is some kind of communication issue going on. Unless someone added acid, the PH would be going way up, so it seems obvious they added acid. That doesn't fit with your belief that it is time for you to take over pool care. Unfortunately there are several possibilities. The pool guy might have added acid when they should not have. They might have added acid because they think they are still managing the chemistry. They might have added acid because even though you are managing the chemistry, they decided that the surface needs more acid to look right (based on how it looked when they were there). In some of those cases, they have messed up and you should correct their errors. In others of those cases they are trying to achieve a specific result by putting the PH very low and you are messing up their process.

Without more information I don't see any way to determine which is the correct interpretation, nor any way to find out more without talking to them. Which is kind of problematic.

 

[teamhurtado]

Yeah. Unfortunate this is occurring right before the 4th. I tried to warn them that I'm not like most other pool owners. I have a TFT-100 kit with a speedstir!

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