As those of of use who use the LQ that get WS know, you need to clean your parts every couple/few weeks with a muriatic acid solution. For the #### of it, I tried something a little different. I unscrewed the top of the flow meter and sprayed a small amount of Descaling spray that I had in there. The plastic turned clear from a milky white. It appears that this may be a reasonably safe and easy way to stay on top of the WS in the flow meter. I'm sure though if you have WS, you will still need to clean the floats, but at least the main part of the flow restriction through the flow meter can be more easily maintained without taking everything apart.
Potential WS maintenance solution for Liquidator
- Thread starter smuggs
- Start date
Tell us the brand of the spray. I have not seen that as a pool item....did you get it at a pool store.
That's a really good thought...thanks for sharing it.
That's a really good thought...thanks for sharing it.
I think it's called De-Scale it.... I bought it at, 
, Leslies to help remove some calcium and iron deposits on my tile line. The calcum is appears to be coming from the grout of my cultured stone facing on my raised bond beam and the iron is coming from deposits contained in my bluestone coping....its only in a couple places, but I figured that I'd try the spray for that application and then just thought about this idea. To be honest, the spray wasn't cheap, and I'm pretty sure that it may be the same product as some other household cleaners (it does clearly state on the bottle that it's biodegradeable). It actually has a familiar smell...sort of like those sprays you can use in your shower on a daily basis to keep soap scum at bay, just not quite as strong. The level of acidity can't be too significant as it's something that you pretty much have to be in the pool with when using for it's primary purpose of removing scale from tiles.
Perhaps an alternate solution for someone to try would be diluted lemon juice or dissolve some vitamin C in water. From what I could tell, for this application, the acidity level doesn't need to be significant.
, Leslies to help remove some calcium and iron deposits on my tile line. The calcum is appears to be coming from the grout of my cultured stone facing on my raised bond beam and the iron is coming from deposits contained in my bluestone coping....its only in a couple places, but I figured that I'd try the spray for that application and then just thought about this idea. To be honest, the spray wasn't cheap, and I'm pretty sure that it may be the same product as some other household cleaners (it does clearly state on the bottle that it's biodegradeable). It actually has a familiar smell...sort of like those sprays you can use in your shower on a daily basis to keep soap scum at bay, just not quite as strong. The level of acidity can't be too significant as it's something that you pretty much have to be in the pool with when using for it's primary purpose of removing scale from tiles. Perhaps an alternate solution for someone to try would be diluted lemon juice or dissolve some vitamin C in water. From what I could tell, for this application, the acidity level doesn't need to be significant.
Dave,
I read the back of a bottle of CLR I have here and it is not safe to use with plastics. So It may work but also may eat away at the plastic.
Brian
I read the back of a bottle of CLR I have here and it is not safe to use with plastics. So It may work but also may eat away at the plastic.
Brian
smuggs said:
Last season my LQ ran for about four months, got WS like many LQ users have gotten, but since it didn't affect the flow I didn't do any WS maintenance.
IMO there's no major difference between acid cleaning and descaling. In both cases the active ingredient has to be in the water, and in both cases the end result is that the calcium of the calcium carbonate (a.k.a "WS") becomes soluble in water. Acid does it by breaking the carbonate which associates with the calcium. The descaler does it by forming a soluble complex with the calcium. However, facts are more important than theory.
smuggs: After you sprayed in the stuff, was the flow meter clear of the WS for a longer period of time as compared to the effect of acid treatment? If this is indeed consistent, then desacling may be better, and I wonder if someone (chemgeek?) can explain what's going on.
If the DeScale It product is what is shown here, then I suspect it still has low pH and they avoid the use of "harsh mineral acids" by simply using an organic acid. So the pH still gets quite low when sprayed on locally, but not so much as to be irritating nor affect overall pool pH. Basically, it takes low pH to initially dissolve the scale and bubble away the carbonate as carbon dioxide and then sequestrants can bind to the calcium to keep it soluble.Water_man said:
I can't find an MSDS or more detailed descriptions than the link above on DeScale It, but this link to a product which sounds similar shows how one can claim to not be toxic nor corrosive yet have a pH of 1 which is clearly very acidic. It's not one of the "common" organic acids which they list, but is still a moderately strong acid. The pKa of 0.176 that they list is similar to the pKa of urea.
I can't tell you which would be more effective either in the short-run for immediate removal nor in the long-run. If the calcium level in the water were an issue, then the sequestrant could help, but realistically one would add that separately to the bulk pool water if the CH were truly too high.
To prevent scale, one can use scale inhibitors that work by slowing down the buildup of scale, rather than by sequestering calcium. For example, having lots of magnesium in the water (i.e. high Total Hardness relative to Calcium Hardness) does this because magnesium gets bound into the calcium carbonate matrix replacing calcium, at least temporarily (magnesium carbonate is more soluble than calcium carbonate so this process only affects the rate, not the thermodyanmics). On the other hand, magnesium sulfate has an extremely high salt crystallization pressure so splash out of the two with subsequent evaporation could be very harsh to cement and stone -- there's no free lunch here.
Ironically, this means that those with natural water that is "hard" and that did not need additional CH but where the CH wasn't too high might find less scaling than those whose fill water was "soft" or low in total hardness and where CH was increased by addition of calcium chloride. This may be why the Hamilton Index that uses Total Hardness is reasonably successful (but not as good as the real calcite saturation index). Their higher total hardness levels say to have lower TA but not low enough to have the saturation index be near zero, but at such higher hardness levels the rate of scale formation may be slower even though the tendency to scale is still there.
Richard
I am becoming more convinced it's going to be quite difficult to find a painless solution to the WS.
I must say that submersing my floats in a 3:1 water/muriatic acid solution cleaned them spotlessly in about 30 seconds and I saw no ill effects.
It's still a PITA to disassemble the floats from the tank but with a little thought, I think I could do the whole process in 15 minutes. Probably two-three times each summer would make it trouble free.
I must say that submersing my floats in a 3:1 water/muriatic acid solution cleaned them spotlessly in about 30 seconds and I saw no ill effects.
It's still a PITA to disassemble the floats from the tank but with a little thought, I think I could do the whole process in 15 minutes. Probably two-three times each summer would make it trouble free.
Thank you, Richard, for this detailed discussion. I remember that more than one person mentioned that they use well water and they haven't had WS. Maybe this is because of Magnesium presence.
I think the best way for the end user is to try both methods and to see what works best. As I mentioned in my previous posts I had WS for the entire 4 month season last year and had no performance issues. However, other folks had problems. Obviously the LQ is a special kind of "animal"
and each case is different.
I think the best way for the end user is to try both methods and to see what works best. As I mentioned in my previous posts I had WS for the entire 4 month season last year and had no performance issues. However, other folks had problems. Obviously the LQ is a special kind of "animal"
and each case is different.
...just started up my pool yesterday, so we'll see how things work out over the coming days/weeks. I've modified my LQ lines using the 3/8 line and adapters from US Plastics as Rabbit has, so it will be interesting to see if that makes a difference in the WS. I will say that it absolutely makes a difference in the flow....I can easily pin the flow to '5' whereas before I could only get to 3.5 before.