Rising CH

[LisaDLu]

Hello - We live in a hard water area. Got the pool replastered in January and the CH has been slowly rising ever since. My husband tested it last week and he got 475 but I got 425 today (and have gotten 425 for the last three weeks). I tested the fill water today and it is 100, and with our temperatures hitting the 100's we are now topping off the pool about twice a week.

Does anyone have a water softener for their pool or is it a whole house water softener? Does it really help with keeping your CH in check over time (years)? Or is it best to try to keep PH low to counteract the high CH?

Full readings from Sunday 6/7 were:
PH - 8 (we are constantly adding acid to keep it under 8 due to the replaster. Of course we added acid after the tests).
TA - 75
FC - 6.0
CC - 0
CYA - 60
Salt - 3100
Temp - 86
Sat Index - between .05 and .06

 

[Texas Splash]

Just to confirm .. have you read this article: Pool School - Start-up New Plaster

- - - Updated - - -

Another: pH rise in new plaster?

 

[Richard320]

I don't have a water softener and the lowest my CH has been in 5 years is 440. Last time I tested the tap it was 130 CH.

Up to about 800 it's not too hard to keep things balanced. Play with poolmath. Plug in all your numbers and look at CSI. Then change each parameter one at a time and see what each does to CSI. You'll see that the big players are actually pH, TA, and temperature. You can't do much about the temperature, especially not where you live, so you play with pH and TA. You have a limited amount of wiggle room with pH since people do want to get in without eye and skin irritation, but it's manageable.

 

[bdavis466]

You can raise your CYA to 80, drop your TA to 60-70 and consider adding borates to counteract the effect of having higher CH in your pool. Your CSI would settle around -0.15 to -0.20 which will also prevent scaling in your salt cell.

A CH around 450, in my opinion is ideal in a SWG pool. You can go much higher than that with no issues.

 

[LisaDLu]

Ok - so it sounds like having CH in the 400's is nothing to panic about. Tomorrow I'm going to do a full set of testing and will play around with pool math for the CSI. What can I realistically expect from CSI? What is the minimum and maximum before I need to drain the pool to lower the CH? Anybody out there know if a water softener would really help?

 

[Richard320]

Ok - so it sounds like having CH in the 400's is nothing to panic about. Tomorrow I'm going to do a full set of testing and will play around with pool math for the CSI. What can I realistically expect from CSI? What is the minimum and maximum before I need to drain the pool to lower the CH? Anybody out there know if a water softener would really help?

A lot depends on how hot the water gets. It gets warm in San Dimas, but not as bad as Palm Springs. As long as the CSI stays below +0.5, you should be okay. And topping off with soft water will help a lot, since almost all the Calcium gets removed. You won't be adding any more to the pool. Whatever number you're at now, that's where it will stay.

 

[bdavis466]

With a SWG 350-500 is perfectly fine. You can go much higher than that as long as you pay attention to the CSI....it just depends on how proactive you are with your pool