Pool consuming acid like crazy

[anderson110]

My plaster pool was completed in Nov 2014. Since then, it has been consuming a lot of acid. I was told this would be the case initially, but it does not seem to be slowing down much. It is a saltwater pool that is covered most of the time.

I just tested and got:

TA 130 (too high?)
FC 5.5
CC 0.5
ph > 8.2 (need to add acid... again)

I have been going through about two gallons of muriatic acid every couple of weeks, and the pH is always back over 8.2 (the top of my scale) when I do another weekly test.

Thoughts?

 

[JasonLion]

You should be adding acid more frequently, so that the PH never gets above 8.0.

Fresh plaster causes the PH, TA, and CH levels to go up rapidly for roughly a month, and more slowly for about a year. However, colder weather slows that time line down significantly, so that "roughly a month" can sometimes last from late fall into the spring.

A gallon of acid a week really isn't very much compared to a typical fresh plaster startup, which can sometimes run as high as a gallon of acid a day for the first month.

Don't worry about the TA until the acid additions settle down a little.

 

[anderson110]

You should be adding acid more frequently, so that the PH never gets above 8.0.

Fresh plaster causes the PH, TA, and CH levels to go up rapidly for roughly a month, and more slowly for about a year. However, colder weather slows that time down line significantly, so that "roughly a month" can sometimes last from late fall into the spring.

A gallon of acid a week really isn't very much compared to a typical fresh plaster startup, which can sometimes run as high as a gallon of acid a day for the first month.

Don't worry about the TA until the acid additions settle down a little.

Great, thanks for your advice. I got the pool down to the bottom of the range yesterday and I'll keep after it every day for awhile.