Adding ph plus after shocking

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The plastic owls do not work in my neck of the woods. They will just sit on the top of the owl's head, even if I move them around! lol

I have tried the spinner flags, CD's and motion detector water spraying devices to no avail.

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Do you have to put chemicals into a pool with sand/salt water systems?
 
YES, your pool will REQUIRE chemicals... or equivalents (a Salt Water Generator "SWG" makes chlorine using salt and electricity)

Chlorine happens to be the safest, most effective, sanitizer. You can drink it.. and effectively do when in the pool. The USDA allows a certain percentage to get into food in prep areas.
 
All pools require chems; Chlorine & Stabilizer. After that, you may need some Baking Soda & Borax. That's about it. Too bad about the owl, around here they do work (to a point), but you have to constantly move them around.

Edit: You may want to add some polyquat, but it's not necessary, it's more piece of mind.
 
It's funny, after being here for a while, you may feel the TF-100 is like the admission price here. Without it you are tied to the bad information from your pool store or limited by the drop kit at your local box store or "guessing"

I spent my first year here resisting spending the money on a "real" test kit... with a green/fuzzy/unbalanced pool. i tried everything to avoid spending the money.

Now I have the kit, I save sooo much time (and money) on maintaining the pool... with chlorine and grocery store purchases. I go to the mom-and-pop local pool store for tools and DE as they have the best prices on these and I need them in business for parts.
 
Do you have to add bleach (chlorine-ha ha, I got that one, it only took 4 hours) to a pool that has a sand / salt water filtration system ?

Do you have to add any of the BBB's to that said system?

I thought that they were chemical free.

Do you have to drain your pool when switching systems?

I just ordered the TF-100 test kit, thanks everybody!!
 

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Beach42 said:
Do you have to add bleach (chlorine-ha ha, I got that one, it only took 4 hours) to a pool that has a sand / salt water filtration system ?

Do you have to add any of the BBB's to that said system?

I thought that they were chemical free.

Do you have to drain your pool when switching systems?

I just ordered the TF-100 test kit, thanks everybody!!
Click to expand...

A sand filter has nothing to do with the pool chemicals. It's just easier to clean than a cartridge filter. A salt water chlorine generator(SWG) uses electricity to turn the salt into chlorine. After it sanitizes the pool it reverts back to salt, and goes through the whole process again. If your alkalinity is within range, you shouldn't need baking soda. You probably won't need borax, but you will need muriatic acid to lower the ph; especially with the SWG, since they tend to cause the ph to rise. All you have to do to switch systems, as long as you have valves to isolate, is add salt to your pool. Good news on the test kit. I ordered mine last year, and all I had to buy was the chlorine test reagents this year. Still had plenty of everything else left.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
Even with a "salt water" pool, you still need to check for chlorine. While the SWG may produce chlorine, it's still wise to have a few jugs of bleach on hand in case it's needed. You'll also need need to adjust Ph up or down (borax & muriatic acid) and alkalinity up or down (baking soda & muriatic acid). To raise the Ph without a chem, you need to aerate the water; fountain, splashing/swimming, breaking the surface on your return, etc... Anything that causes commotion in the water will increase Ph. Also, with a SWG system, the Ph rises naturally and you'll spend more time lowering it than raising it. I also should have mentioned to add the Speed Stir to your test kit. It makes testing WAY easier.
 
To answer your earlier question, no, you do not need to drain the pool to switch to a sand filtration system. If you have valves installed at both connections to the pool, all you need to do is close them and disconnect your old pump/filter and reconnect the sand pump and filter. If you get an Intex, it will hook right up. If you get another brand, you might have to replace the fittings in the pool, but even so, you'd only have to drain below the lowest hole.



However, I think you are confusing a sand filter with a saltwater chlorine generator. They are 2 different things. A sand filter just replaces your cartridge filter (and does a better job!), but you still need to get chlorine into the pool somehow. You can continue adding bleach, as I assume you do now, or you can add a saltwater generator which makes chlorine by breaking down the salt that you add to the pool. This also does not require draining - just add salt to your existing water.



Any combination of the units can be used, a sand filter with or without a saltwater generator, or a cartridge filter with or without an SWG. Intex makes a combo sand filter/SWG, but I don't recommend it because inevitably, one or the other will break first, requiring you to replace both of them.



http://www.intexcorp.com/28663eg.html?



http://www.intexcorp.com/28651eg.html?
 
Beach42 is almost certainly talking about an Intex product that is a sand filter, pump, and SWG system all in one.

Nothing is chemical free. You always need to manually balance a few of the levels occasionally.

With a SWG you would almost never need to add bleach, but you might have to now and then if something is going wrong.
 
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