Where do I start? I do miss the days of being blissfully ignorant on pool maintenance. Since swallowing the "red pill" on this site and diving deep into water chemistry, I find myself caught up reading various viewpoints and threads for hours on end. Watching people come into the pool store, smile, and just walk away with their chemicals reminds me of a much simpler life; however, I do have a crystal clear pool with no need to ever shock or slam thanks to this site.
Anyways, on to my post. We have a vinyl above ground (9,000 G), sand filter, gas heater, SWCG, midwest climate so pool only open 4-5 months. We don't store much in the way of chemicals -- we drop a pound of dry acid in every week to keep up with the PH rise and possibly a dose of dichlor or cal hypo around a big pool party to bump FC to 7-8 from our 5 target with 70 CYA. TA hovers around 80 and CH around 130.
With that said, completely understand the byproducts of solid chemicals, like CYA, CH, or sulfates, but OK spending a little more for convenience and addressing those, so avoid dealing with bleach and MA for the most part even though it the pure and preferred method. I can keep things like CYA and CH under control, but there is no way to measure sulfates.
In using the pound a week of the sulfur based acid (sodium bisulfate / Ph-), am I going to eventually find crystals everywhere and a rusty heater and salt cell? Is this really as scary as it sounds? The pool store sells it by the truckload and in BioGuard fashion they even have a product marketed to salt pool owners, "Saltscapes" 93% sodium bisulfate. It doesn't affect my TA, seems to work well, lowers from 7.9 to 7.4 using a pound a week. I have yet to find a thread advocating for this stuff, but assume it has to be OK given how much of it is in use out there.
We probably add an inch of water a week to combat evaporation (keep pool warm around 88), so fresh water is always being added, but we haven't established a drain and refill regimen. TDS is measuring 3,030 (3,100 ppm salt), as this is new pool -- are sulfates just another TDS?
Trying to determine if this is worth being concerned about.
Thanks for advice!
Anyways, on to my post. We have a vinyl above ground (9,000 G), sand filter, gas heater, SWCG, midwest climate so pool only open 4-5 months. We don't store much in the way of chemicals -- we drop a pound of dry acid in every week to keep up with the PH rise and possibly a dose of dichlor or cal hypo around a big pool party to bump FC to 7-8 from our 5 target with 70 CYA. TA hovers around 80 and CH around 130.
With that said, completely understand the byproducts of solid chemicals, like CYA, CH, or sulfates, but OK spending a little more for convenience and addressing those, so avoid dealing with bleach and MA for the most part even though it the pure and preferred method. I can keep things like CYA and CH under control, but there is no way to measure sulfates.
In using the pound a week of the sulfur based acid (sodium bisulfate / Ph-), am I going to eventually find crystals everywhere and a rusty heater and salt cell? Is this really as scary as it sounds? The pool store sells it by the truckload and in BioGuard fashion they even have a product marketed to salt pool owners, "Saltscapes" 93% sodium bisulfate. It doesn't affect my TA, seems to work well, lowers from 7.9 to 7.4 using a pound a week. I have yet to find a thread advocating for this stuff, but assume it has to be OK given how much of it is in use out there.
We probably add an inch of water a week to combat evaporation (keep pool warm around 88), so fresh water is always being added, but we haven't established a drain and refill regimen. TDS is measuring 3,030 (3,100 ppm salt), as this is new pool -- are sulfates just another TDS?
Trying to determine if this is worth being concerned about.
Thanks for advice!
