First time poster - Makin sure I'm on the right track :)

[duraleigh]

yes

 

[kimkats]

Here is a thread for you to read and enjoy. It is a fun read to top it off!

So you are new to testing

Ladies and Gentlemen, boys and girls, AH-64 Apache attack helicopters…… It’s that time of year again with an influx of newbs either getting a late start or coming to us trying to undo what hasn’t been working. First of all, I’d like to welcome you all. You’re gonna love it here. We will...

www.troublefreepool.com

 

[Jake&Clan]

Good news! FC/TV is 3.5 and pH 7.66. Even better, I've not added chlorine in 5 days. CYA for the win. That's around 40. TA is still high. Muriatic Acid will arrive soon. Sprung for a Dolphin robotic pool vac (does an awesome job) so I've got a perfectly balanced (best I can tell) pool without a lick of dirt in it sitting at 82.3 degrees and climbing.

Now I gotta figure out if my water level drops are a hole in the liner or evaporation. Grab my snorkel and had my kids stand on my back as I went all over the bottom of the pool looking for holes. Didn't find a single one. Had a pool cover on it over the winter and when we open the pool there's only 18 inches of water in the bottom. We did find a pinhole at the bottom near the pool ladder (I patched it). Not sure we could lose 20 inches of water through that. Lots of trash on the top of that pool cover so I figured if there was a hole in the pool cover it would trashed the after up but it was crystal clear. Friend of mine thinks that the pool cover was still permeable enough to allow the pool water to rise up and sit on top of that pool cover and evaporate. It was on there for months. I only emptied it once.

 

[Jake&Clan]

Jake and Clan,

I had to look up the K-2007 to see what it was! It does not contain the all important FAS/DPD test which allows you to measure FC well above 10 ppm. This is a pricey test but mandatory for the methods we teach.
It has no CC's test
It also has no TA test
It also has no CH test

The Phenol Red pH test (that is in both the K-2007 and the TF-100) is the most dependable pH test at a reasonable price. A digital tester can be had for quite a bit more money (I see you already purchased it) but you really can trust the Phenol Red pH test.......inexpensive and remarkably dependable

It took me doing one chlorine test with the T f-100 to immediately realize how much more I like this test. It is so much more dummy proof. No more comparing colors to figure it out. I only have a bachelor's degree so my limited intelligence quotient much prefers something going from pink to clear then "which shade of purple/lavender/violet are you today?!"

When I got the digital pH meter I also bought that set of pool water that has known chemical values and I just used the pH one to calibrate it. It was already perfectly on the dot. Sticking a meter in a vial? I'll take that over 'which shade of orange/yellow/red/velvet/fuschia/kinda-red/dark-orange are you?'

 

[IceShadow]

You can do the bucket test to see if it's evaporation or a leak.

 

[Jake&Clan]

Great idea! Question. First time I've done TA test with the t100 kit.

Just came back at 260....

Did it twice just to make sure. Green kept lightening up but it was visibly not any tint of red until 270.

Did I read correctly that TA doesn't have much of an impact on the other values? FC/TC are 3.0 (never have CC), pH 8.06, CYA 45, TA 260. Muriatic Acid should arrive any day now.

 

[duraleigh]

When the TA test is quite new, it will often return results too high. Static makes the drops "jump" off the tip before they are fully formed,

You can alleviate this by wiping the tips with a damp cloth between drops. This goes away in a week or so.

That said, it looks like your TA is high regardless but it (wiping the tip) makes enough difference that I would suggest you redo that test.

Almost forgot to answer your question.......yes TA is initially not hat significant. Get your pH and chlorine and CYA where they belong and then you can work on TA.

 

[Jake&Clan]

When the TA test is quite new, it will often return results too high. Static makes the drops "jump" off the tip before they are fully formed,

You can alleviate this by wiping the tips with a damp cloth between drops. This goes away in a week or so.

That said, it looks like your TA is high regardless but it (wiping the tip) makes enough difference that I would suggest you redo that test.

Almost forgot to answer your question.......yes TA is initially not hat significant. Get your pH and chlorine and CYA where they belong and then you can work on TA.

So the reason I redid the test twice WAS because the first time I did not wipe the tip in between. The second time I did. The first time without wiping I got 330. The second time after wiping between each drip I got 260. Admittedly, even on the 260, after the first dozen drips, I would sometimes go two or three drips before wiping. Not surprisingly that it would have taken quite a bit longer to do the test wiping it 26 times. Maybe I would have gotten a little bit lower result had I actually wiped 26 times versus 22 wipes? I think I surmised that the test was either inaccurate, or, didn't really matter. Not the test, I mean. My total alkalinity has always been high as you pointed out so I kind of took it with a grain of salt and when the muriatic acid gets here tomorrow I'll pour a bunch in per the pool meth calculator from TPF . I sort of figured if the real number was 150... 200... 250... It needed to come down so...

I could use my K2007 test to get a little more accurate results as those reagents are not expired but definitely at least 1 year old.

 

[duraleigh]

I could use my K2007 test to get a little more accurate results as those reagents are not expired but definitely at least 1 year old.

You could do that if you like but you are close enough. They're the same reagents anyway. Let that new kit "settle in" and get rid of that static and then address the TA when everything else is where you want it.

 

[Jake&Clan]

You could do that if you like but you are close enough. They're the same reagents anyway. Let that new kit "settle in" and get rid of that static and then address the TA when everything else is where you want it.

Still testing in the 250 range on the TA and I'm out of the #9 re-agent from my old k2007. That said the muriatic acid (the knock off "magic acid", the only thing I could get my hands off at the time) did drop the pH (finally) to 7.5. I'd been fighting and fighting the constant 8.0 pH for 2 weeks. There wasn't enough dry acid that I could get in this pool to get that pH to come down and stay down. I poured pounds and pounds of that stuff in. I did finally get my hands on the high concentration ACTUAL muriatic acid, today. I'll keep using MA to regulate pH. That should help with the TA too