Accidentally added pH Up instead of down.

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AimeeH: that's good to know. I'm still getting water softener because I can only imagine what that does to my clothes.

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With my current pool tests being the following, is it safe to swim?

pH: 7.9
FC: 9
CC: 0
TC: 9
TA: 130
CH: 425
CYA: 55

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I'm going to continue beating down the TA and pH over the next week till I get this consistently where I want it, but I wonder if we shouldn't be swimming.
 
PH is a tad high. With high TA your PH will probably rise quickly. When it gets to 7.8 add acid to lower it to 7.2. Doing this will gradually lower your TA. Or you can lower it more quickly as follows, Pool School - Lower Total Alkalinity

It is safe to swim when:
PH is 7.2-7.8
Chlorine is above minimum level for your CYA and below shock level
Ues the Chlorine CYA Chart
water is clear
 
@Scuba_Steve: since the end of March or so.

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It's New Orleans though. We've had some scorchers and had to top off the pool with water a few times. Maybe that's what it is. The water is evaporating and adding more CH. How the heck do I stop that? Is there a service that delivers water in large amounts?
 
Yes, it is quite common to have water trucked in for new pool fills. In some areas they will also bring a truck with a huge reverse osmosis unit inside and hook it up to your pool to purify your water. Takes the CYA out and everything. That is only in very limited areas though.

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I doubt that is the cause if your pool has only been open a few months. You would have had to replace the entire volume of your pool 2 times to get to those numbers based on your fill water.
 

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@Scuba_Steve: weird. I wonder why the CH doubled. All I can think of is the constant brushing of the plaster or maybe the test is reading something else as calcium hardness. I'll have to look into the reverse osmosis thing. Odd that the salt, which also doesn't evaporate, has gone down considerably from rains and getting out of the pool and such to the tune of about 80lbs of extra added salt. Wait ... could the rain have a very high calcium content???

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@pooldv: good to know!
 
As far as I know, rain has 0 calcium. After all, calcium does not evaporate away. Rain is evaporated water.

If your CSI was ever -0.6 or below, it probably came from your plaster. If I am not mistaken, new plaster always leaches some calcium away into the water. I truthfully know next to nothing about in ground pools though, so I could easily be wrong about this.
 
@Scuba_Steve: I'm betting you're right about that. All that powder we were brushing into the drain while the plaster was curing had to be made of something. I may do one of those osmotic treatments at some point in the future. I found someone that can do that in the area. Yeah, I'll have to start over with the salt but I'd rather be more aware of what's in the water.

I am still fighting with the TA. Got a great 3M vapor mask with cartridges specifically designed to filter acid fumes and the googles to match. This was the first time I could not smell that horrid stuff and now I feel a little better using it. The pH had finally spiked back over 8.2 with the TA at 130, but I dosed more MA and now the pH is at 7.5 or so and the TA is at 110. The swim jets keep raising the pH pretty fast so I'm guessing I'll have the TA at 60 to 80 in no time. I've been using an Excel spreadsheet to track my readings over time. It should give me a sense how to deal with the pH in the future. Though I'm not measuring the MA out exactly. I'm eyeballing it because the less I have to deal with that cloud the better.
 
If you are trying to lower the TA, you should drop the pH down to 7.2 each time it rises. Let the aeration take up to no higher than 7.8, then knock it back to 7.2 again. The lower pH helps it off gas faster and thus will lower the TA faster.
 
chiefwej: the pH rises every time we use the swim jets just to swim. They're heavily aerated. So it's always rising, but I do think I've nearly got it under control. I might have overshot on the muriatic acid though because my latest treatment of MA, after going right back up to 8.2, has brought the pH down to 6.9 or 7.0 (just a little more orange than the 6.8 but not quite near 7.2 so that's why I guess 6.9 or 7.0). However, I also have my TA down to 70 from 110, which was down from 130, which was down from 140.

Now, with all the talk of TA being a buffer, does this mean that it will take longer for the jets to bring the pH up? I'm hoping so because with the TA at 110 last night, a few hours of the jets running brought the pH from 7.4 up to 8.2 again. I'd like to see these jets take at least a few days to spike the pH that fast. I'm hoping the TA of 70 (SWG recommended is 60 to 80) helps!
 
pH will rise faster from 6.9 to 7.2 than it will from 7.2 to 7.5 or 7.5 to 7.8 etc.

Also note, that TA is not a set ideal number. Depending on other factors some may find a sweet spot with TA vs pH at 100, some might find it at 40. The 60-80 is just an average place where it usually falls in to line.
 
Well let's hope it does fall into line. This is becoming quite the project. But 100 definitely wasn't the pH sweet spot so hoping 80 will be. I just turned the filter pump and swim jets off at 12:52am so it should all settle overnight. Even after a shower, that cloud of muriatic acid is bothering my skin a slight bit. I'll be glad when I don't have to use it as often. If it turns out that I do, there's a local weekly pool service and I'm gonna hire them and just tell them what numbers I want them to set for and that I'll be testing every so often to see that they are. I'd rather oversee someone else's work. LOL

My last sets of numbers:

Date 6/16/15
Time 10:41 PM
pH: 6.9
FC: 9
CC: 0.5
TC: 9.5
TA: 70
CH: 350
CYA: 55
(CYA has not risen since yesterday even though I put it in two days ago and got it from 40 to 55 with an amount that should have brought it to 70)

Date 6/16/15
Time 11:38 PM
pH: 7.2
TA: 80
 

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