Adjusted TA?

[rinaldok]

Has anyone gone to a Poolwerx store and had a water test which gives 2 results for Alkalinity? One for "Alkalinity" and one for "Adjusted Alkalinity"?

Occasionally I like to sanity check my test results against pool stores. Poolwerx has a digital meter system so I figured it would be less error-prone than Leslie's.

My tests show my TA around 70. Today, I got 80 from Leslie's, but this one from Poolwerx was odd:

Alkalinity: 66
Adjusted Alkalinity: 37

The guy said to ignore the first number, the second one is what's important -- yet he could not answer my question when I asked exactly *what* was being "adjusted" for? He just kept saying that's the number to use, and their suggestion was to add over 14lb of Alkalinity Up (to my 15k gallon pool) which, by my calculations, would raise my TA over 100 ppm!

He ALSO insisted that higher TA keeps pH from rising. I just kind of crossed my eyes and moved on with my day.

Does anyone know what that "adjusted" number is and why they're using it? I've never seen it mentioned here.

 

[Donldson]

Occasionally I like to sanity check my test results against pool stores. Poolwerx has a digital meter system so I figured it would be less error-prone than Leslie's.

Know why places have digital meters? To give people the impression that they are less error-prone than the competition. The reality? It's all marketing and they are almost always more error prone due to the rigorous calibration they require. Sales aren't made because results are accurate, sales are made because people believe the results are accurate.

Anyway, adjusted TA just factors CYA in to the equation. It is unnecessary when using PoolMath to calculate CSI. And stay out of the pool store. Remember, the guy who can't even tell you what adjusted TA is or understand how TA works is almost certainly also responsible for calibrating the testing machine. Now that's a sanity check for you ?

 

[rinaldok]

Anyway, adjusted TA just factors CYA in to the equation. It is unnecessary when using PoolMath to calculate CSI. And stay out of the pool store. Remember, the guy who can't even tell you what adjusted TA is or understand how TA works is almost certainly also responsible for calibrating the testing machine. Now that's a sanity check for you ?

Thanks for the answer. Yes, I realize all those things about pool stores. Grain of salt and all that, for sure. I have difficulty with the colors on the tests sometimes, so occasionally I like to gather some extra data points to see if I'm within standard deviations.