Borates and pH

[Cena_sea]

Its been over six months but the ph is still running high (also because of aeration). I recently added borates and am starting at a low amount to see if it makes any difference with the ph. I had borax already so I decided to experiment.

 

[YippeeSkippy]

Please don't add any more Borates at this time. We prefer them to only be added after your parameters are stable and settled. It appears yours are not yet. :/

Maddie

 

[Mdragger88]

It can take a year for your plaster to fully cure & things to settle.

Borates - Why and How

Borates - Why and How Why Adding borates can improve your experience with your pool, but is completely optional. If you do plan to use borates, wait until everything else is settled down before adding borates, especially TA and PH. The only situations where we specifically recommend using...

www.troublefreepool.com

Should I wait on adding borates to a new plaster pool?

I'm thinking about buying boric acid from duda diesel, but I'm not sure if I should wait for my plaster to quit requiring so much MA. Is there a good reason to wait on taking the borates plunge with new plaster, or am I anticipating a problem that shouldn't occur? I'm thinking since I'm adding...

www.troublefreepool.com

 

[JoyfulNoise]

Small additions of borates will do no good and be entirely unnoticeable. Even the recommended levels of 50ppm are barely enough to affect pH. Your aeration is the biggest issue and it needs to be tightly controlled or else you will never get off the pH skyrocket.

 

[Cena_sea]

Yes. It’s mostly the ph at issue. According to pool math I put enough in for 24 (end goal was 30). I tested my fill water ta (it’s 50 —same as last current level of pool ta). Adding acid means I need to also raise the ta as well to maintain even a 40. It’s probably because the spillover runs constantly with the pool on. I actually really like that effect (builder set this up and I was hoping with borates I could keep this) but I need to ask him how to switch to a dedicated spillover mode. I also need to switch because I am curious about switching to 24 hours running of the vsp.

 

[JoyfulNoise]

Yes. It’s mostly the ph at issue. According to my math I put enough in for 24 (end goal was 30). I tested my fill water ta (it’s 50 —same as last current level of pool ta). Adding acid means I need to also raise the ta as well to maintain even a 40. It’s probably because the spillover runs constantly with the pool on. I actually really like that effect (builder set this up) but I need to ask him how to switch to a dedicated spillover mode. I also need to switch because I am curious about switching to 24 hours running of the vsp.

Builders do that a lot with creating a constant spillover features and while it might look nice or sound nice, it's not good for water chemistry (which most builders don't know the first thing about). If you post up some pictures of your plumbing and pool specs (filling out your signature with equipment and pool specifics helps), folks can give you some advice on how to automate the spillover. My attached spa originally spilled over into the pool whenever the pool pump was on and all I had was a manual valve to adjust the flow. I was able to easily automate that valve and now the spillover only happens for a total of 1 hour per day in two 30min intervals set at the beginning and end of the pump schedule. By doing that and not using my waterfall unless people are in the pool, my aeration greatly decreased and so did my pH rise.