calcium hardness and T/A to high

[Tsgtwheeler]

Ok I have a 24' x 52" above ground pool. running a dough-boy xp1 1/1/2 hp pump into a Hayward preflex ec50 de filter into a Hayward AQ-Trol-RJ salt generator.
This year opened the pool to a nasty green alge infested pool. used my TF-100 kit to slam the pool. now a week later we have a beautiful clear pool.
FC 4ppm
cc .5 ppm
ph 7.5
ch 400ppm
ta 200 ppm
cya 70
Seems like I have everything great except the calcium hardness and the Alkalinity.
I cannot add water to the pool we have very hard water and the Ta is high.
What could I do inorder to lower these
Thanks for any help

 

[jblizzle]

The short answer is not much.

Only reasonable way to lower CH is by replacing water. And that is off the table. So you just have to keep your pool balance by keeping the pH (and maybe TA) lower.

Often you can just ignore TA and it will find its balance as you just keep the pH in range.
If so desired, you can actively Lower Total Alkalinity following the proces in the link.

 

[mknauss]

The only way to reduce CH is to drain some of the pool and add water with a lower CH.

Your CH is not high, so I would not concern myself with that.

Your TA is high. And it would help your SWCG stay scale free to lower the TA into the 70 ppm range and keep it there.

Read this Pool School - Lower Total Alkalinity

It is suggested you monitor CSI - Calcite Saturation Index. PoolMath and the PoolMath app calculate that for you. With a SWCG it is best to keep the CSI between -0.3 and 0.0

Take care.

 

[Richard320]

What he said! ^^^^

I have never had CH as low as 400 in my pool. The best I ever got was 440 -- down from 1100+ after a lot of rain a few years back.

The CH is not ideal, but it's easily dealt with. Play with poolmath. Plug all the numbers in on both sides and then adjust things one at a time and see what does what to the CSI. You'll see that temperature and TA and pH have a whole lot more to do with scale formation than Calcium! You can't do much about the water temperature, but fixing pH and TA is really easy with some Muriatic Acid.

 

[JohnFoe]

My CH is 425 and it is "fine".

Lots of rain will lower it since my fill water is around 500 so the more rain the better. However evaporation can be a problem.

Things I thought about doing if it got out of control:

1. Fill up or top off the pool using my house water which has a softener (0 CH).
2. Buy a RV water softener which uses standard hose connections and pump water out of the pool using a sump pump through it, back into the pool. Typically these need rejuvenation cycles every 700-1000 gallons at this hardness level. So this could be time consuming, but could lower it significantly. Only good thing is the refresh cycles just use table salt to clean and then repeat.

However I have read others here that it is manageable under 600 ppm. I don't have a SWG like you.

 

[myblessednest]

Did you end up buying the RV water softener? I was wondering if that worked.