Frustrated with calcium levels in pool - may be time for water softener

[setsailsoon]

Appreciate all the insight. My takeaways from the last dozen posters is to:

1. Lower/balance out the TA, pH.
2. Minimize evaporation
3. Consider a water softener

All these are in play. I got the TA and pH down and the flakes went down significantly. Evaporation is just something we’re going to have to deal with, unfortunately. The pump and waterfall run 12 hours a day (8 to 8). My wife and kids want the pool at 90 degrees during the winter (pool gets used daily). The pool is on the south side of the house with no screen enclosure so summer temps will hit high 80s easily. And I’m not terribly interested in covering the pool considering how frequently we use it. I’m very interested in the whole house water softener so we’ve reached out to Culligan and some other local shops.

Manny,
Looks like you've got your options lined up and I certainly agree that a cover is not a great option if you use your pool a lot. We're in the same boat. We use the pool and spa several times per week now and will soon be using it every day. One of the best things we did was to add the screened enclosure, not cheap but great value for us since it does yield some reduced windage and we have zero bugs so we often are in the pool in the early evening... just another option for your consideration.

On the softener option I found it's similar to the pool store issues we have for pools. Don't think there's a TFP type of site for water softeners but I would check the online sales sites before you talk to the local sales agents. The online sites offer sizing guides and information about options that will be good to know before you get the "hype". All the different manufacturers are very, very similar and all of the control heads are made by a couple of companies. I ended up buying a Fleck (one of the manufacturers of control heads). Install was simple and it's been in service for 5 years with absolutely no problems. Also, and again analogous to to pools I strongly recommend you test your water yourself. You can find a couple of services that will do this for you at a cost but it's all they do and they don't sell water treating equipment. I ended up putting an under sink RO unit in to remove small amounts of compounds I don't want my family to drink. Again, easy peasy to install myself. Drop tests are readily available so you can monitor performance also. I bought a Hach test for this and I test quarterly. So far every test result has been less than 1 ppm.

I hope this is helpful, and good luck!

Chris

 

[cfherrman]

I went with a fleck on Amazon for around $700 for 64000 grain, bigger is better no matter what.

If your handy you could diy, it's very easy depending on your house. Fleck is very friendly to diy repairs I have heard. I just used my ch test converted to grains, rounded up, and doubled the reserve capacity because of the pool, gives me 2944 gallons I think per Regen.

If you like those pH driving things you just have to be on top of your pH control, and ta if you are adding a lot if acid. Once you get the ch in balence you can run pH at 7.8 and that is easier to keep there than the lower numbers, you can even use acid injection.

With a softener you will actually, slowly, lower you ch levels, I lowered mine about 25-50 last year, so you should only be increasing salt into your pool. If I recall my softener is adding 125 ppm salt over what's in the fill water. The softener doesn't use very much salt, bag a month, so I might switch to sodium free salt for lowering it in the drinking water.

 

[setsailsoon]

I went with a fleck on Amazon for around $700 for 64000 grain, bigger is better no matter what.

If your handy you could diy, it's very easy depending on your house. Fleck is very friendly to diy repairs I have heard. I just used my ch test converted to grains, rounded up, and doubled the reserve capacity because of the pool, gives me 2944 gallons I think per Regen.

If you like those pH driving things you just have to be on top of your pH control, and ta if you are adding a lot if acid. Once you get the ch in balence you can run pH at 7.8 and that is easier to keep there than the lower numbers, you can even use acid injection.

With a softener you will actually, slowly, lower you ch levels, I lowered mine about 25-50 last year, so you should only be increasing salt into your pool. If I recall my softener is adding 125 ppm salt over what's in the fill water. The softener doesn't use very much salt, bag a month, so I might switch to sodium free salt for lowering it in the drinking water.

Casey,

Independently,we came to the same conclusion. I have a Fleck unit as well. With very high CH you can't go too far wrong with a 64K unit. You don't save that much even if you can reduce the size. We're semi-retired so we're watching the pennies and it's only the wife and me most of the time. So we don't use a lot of water and I went a little smaller. Total hardness is less than 1 gr/gal (17.1 ppm) so we do have to watch the CH. We only use about 1 bag of salt every 4-6 months.

The pool store analogy was serious. The "water conditioning" company quoted $3000 for their "best in class" unit that had half the resin mine had. Then the under sink RO unit was $999 more. Again mine has a larger capacity unit cost me $200.

This is a pool site so I won't ramble more about softener experience.

Manny, if you'd like any more info on this PM me and I can share all the rest of the info I have.

Chris

 

[BowserB]

Only slightly related, if you go for a whole house water softener, you will save your water heater and generally improve water quality for shower, dish washing and everything else, not to mention eliminating that white residue on your fixtures, in your dishwasher and even in your washing machine. My wife can't say enough about how much better the water is in the shower and for her hair. Our granddaughter constantly wants to come over here just to use our soft water shower! One caution. If the placement of the water softener in your plumbing means your sprinkler system or outdoor water faucets will have soft water, or if you're concerned about adding sodium to your drinking water, you might want to consider using potassium chloride rather than the much cheaper sodium chloride in your system. Sodium--especially enough to address your extreme hard water--will be detrimental to your lawn and plants. Indeed it will probably accumulate enough to eventually kill the vegetation in your yard. Potassium, OTOH, is in fact a component of fertilizer and will not harm plants. It is much more expensive, though. I buy Morton brand potassium chloride at a local Texas supermarket chain, HEB, for $23.98 per 40 lb bag that lasts about six weeks in our house (just two of us). Sodium Chloride pellets are about $7. Sodium chloride is lot cheaper, however, even the potassium chloride is not a lot of money when you consider the significant benefits of soft water.

 

[MannyCPA]

Wanted to update this thread. Followed the advice given and after 2 weeks the calcium flakes disappeared. Haven't had any issues since with visible flakes. Better news, my calcium has gone from 600 to 475 in 4 months. Why? Because we've had some wicked rain in the past 4 months in Tampa and I've drained nearly half the pool during that time span to keep the water appropriately leveled. Very happy about that. Thanks again for all the advice!

 

[cfherrman]

Free water!

FYI water from your roof to the pool will have calcium in it washing it from your roof. One poster tested it at 40 ch