Thanks for all the great advice. It seems like TFP recommends borax over washing soda for raising pH. Just wondering what the advantage is with borax? I’ve been using washing soda because it seems like I need to use a lot less of it than borax to raise the pH. Just wondering if there’s a specific reason borax seems to be the chemical of choice for raising pH at TFP.
Borax vs Washing Soda
- Thread starter mikewen2
- Start date
Wash soda raises both PH and TA considerably. We prefer to work on either separately with Borax and Baking soda.
Both are dirt cheap. Borax is $1.50 / lb and baking soda is $0.50 / lb. Neither will break the bank.
Both are dirt cheap. Borax is $1.50 / lb and baking soda is $0.50 / lb. Neither will break the bank.
- Sep 23, 2015
- 1,651
- Pool Size
- 20000
- Surface
- Plaster
- Chlorine
- Salt Water Generator
- SWG Type
- Astral Viron V25
@mikewen2 It’s not often that a pool needs the pH raised. How are you chlorinating your pool? pH normally has a tendency to rise when stabilized chlorine is not being used. If your using stabilized chlorine like pucks be cautious because they will add to your CyA which can become too high to manage.
Yep. I use liquid chlorine after reading the material in this group and have stopped using stabilized chlorine pucks. The other issue I have treating my pool is that the pool came with the house when I bought it and there was a little information as to exactly how many gallons it is plus it’s a very odd shape called a Grecian. I estimated somewhere between 25,000 and 30,000 gallons but I really have no way of knowing exactly how many gallons it is and it makes adding chemicals extremely difficult.
Fine tune the dose as you go. If you overshoot a little, lower the gallons by 500 each time until it does what it should. If you undershoot, then raise the gallons.
Without an autofill and overflow, it'll rarely be dead on anyway and can easily fluctuate between rain and evaporation. The Northeast is wild and we may be down or up several inches in a couple days. Then a couple days later we can be the other way.
- Sep 23, 2015
- 1,651
- Pool Size
- 20000
- Surface
- Plaster
- Chlorine
- Salt Water Generator
- SWG Type
- Astral Viron V25
The best way to guess the volume is to break odd shapes down into smaller pieces. Grecian is a rectangle with two semicircles on either end? So one rectangle and one circle and add the two. Then the next time you add something use the largest guesstimate and test again after it’s mixed. Then adjust the volume down to match the difference between the calculated increase compared to the measured increase.