Baking soda amounts and do I do it now?

[aquamarine]

Okay, my TA is 22 or 23, and apparently for my pool it should be more like 90 (70-90). So the pool calculator tells me for a 27000 gal pool, I need to add around 26 lbs of baking soda to get it to 90. Around 18 lbs to get it to 70... is this right? Is it worth doing? Should I just get the level to 50 or 70? (Last year for some reason we had 50 be the target.)

Also, right now my pool is swampy. Not totally terrible, but it's greenish. So I am prepping and ready to buy a ton of bleach and want to shock it hard starting this evening / as soon as I am ready. I added muriatic acid to get pH lower... I want it around 7.2 and it was around 7.5. I brushed the pool, and will run the filter for the next 2.5 days. So is now a bad time to try to change the TA? I know the baking soda will raise pH and then I'll run out of muriatic acid unless I go pick some up. I'm not sure how much it raises the pH and how much I can add at once.

Help!
Thanks!

 

[duraleigh]

1. How did you get a test result of 22-23. Is it a strip? If so, I wouldn't trust it and I would get another test.

2. Baking soda will not affect your pH.

3. Can you post a full set of test results to give us a better picture of your water?

 

[aquamarine]

I was using some HTH test kit I have here. It took 8 drops to go red, but 7 was sort of close, so I multiplied 7.7 x 3 = 23. I know that's low but probably true? I haven't done anything for TA for a year I guess?

In the pool school section of this site, I believe it said the baking soda will raise pH. But I guess it's minor then.

 

[JasonLion]

Using the HTH test kit, each drop counts as 10. Also, you keep adding drops as long as the color continues changing, so your drop count is 8. That means your TA level is currently 80, which is fine.