bleach raising pH rapidly

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skyeboysteve

skyeboysteve

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Feb 2, 2015
33
Grand Prairie, Texas
As a new pool owner five years ago, I started using bleach after stumbling across this very helpful forum. However, I found I was going through a gallon of muriatic acid every week to keep the pH down. I noticed after switching to trichlor tablets (when I left the house for two weeks and had no one to watch my pool) that my pH had kept an even 7.5 since I'd left. I found that in fact my pH never varied as long as I'd use trichlor. The only problem of course is the buildup of CYA--which seems to climb almost precisely 50ppm per six months. Draining my pool every 18 months is not something I find that economical, (and seems wasteful), so after draining my pool completely last July, I used trichlor till last January (when CYA reached 50ppm) and went back to bleach. Sure enough, with an alkalinity of 70, starting at 7.2 pH, I notice my pH rises 0.2 to 0.3 four days after adding 121 fl. oz. of 8.25% bleach. So, just 363 oz later, I'm having to dump half a gallon of muriatic acid to get pH down to 7.5. Of course my alkalinity goes down slightly, so I have to dump in baking soda. Sometimes I wonder if replacing 28,000 gallons of water is more economical in the end--definitely a lot less trouble using trichlor.

The reason I bring this up is because when I've searched the forums here, I keep seeing that bleach isn't supposed to raise pH much over-all--especially with a low TA, yet that's not been my experience at all; so I'm curious if I'm doing something wrong or missing some key element? Is it ok to drive my TA much lower than 70 to help buffer the effects of bleach?

Thanks in advance for any advice... :)

Steve
 
:wave: Welcome to TFP!!!

The bleach is basically pH neutral, slight rise when added, but the pH drops back down as the chlorine is consumed.

Try letting the TA go down a little more, like 60ppm.

Do you have any water features in your pool?
What is the pH of your top off water?
 
Yes, one thing you are missing is that using Pucks drives the pH down, so when you remove them from use, you no longer have that helping to push the pH down.

The net reaction/conversion of bleach winds up being neutral, even though in neat form bleach pH is high.
 
Wow, thanks for the "welcomes" and all the responses, folks....

Jblizzle and Fungi, I don't have any water features, nor do the return jets break the surface. The're not much splashing around (by would-be-swimmers) either, as temps just haven't gotten high enough so far this year to splash around in the pool for very long. I don't know off hand what my tap water is pH wise, but will test when I get home. It's been raining like crazy here lately (seems like the monsoons have migrated to Texas), but apparently I'm not getting enough "acid-rain". :p

Bama Rambler, I'll try taking my TA down to 50, and see if that keeps my pool's acid addiction down...

Thanks again for the ideas, everyone!
 
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