Help - did I add too much boric acid?

[Ozsplace]

So we just got our pool completed and I've read pool school and am using pool math to do my calculations. We have a salt water generator and I wanted to also add boric acid to help with PH and general water "feel". We have an 18,000 gallon pool verified by the installer and by using multiple pool size estimates online. For an 18,000 gallon pool it says we needed 13.5 bags of salt to get to 3600 ppm of salt and 43 pounds of boric acid to get to 50ppm of borates. I wanted to play it safe and go below those values as to not over shoot but got high readings of both.

We used 12 bags (40 lb) of pool salt and have a reading of 4300 ppm - the IC40 read 4200 and the test kit 1766 had a 4300ppm as well.

The boric acid I used 35 pounds and am using the test strips for that and after two test strips it looks closer to the 80ppm than the 50ppm.

What am I doing wrong?

FC is currently real high at 12 since I am dialing in the SWGG - ran it for 24 hours at 50% - now I'm running it at 10 hours at 50%.
PH is at 7.2

Are the test strips that bad? Do I need to drain some water and add fresh?

 

[jblizzle]

Sounds like your pool is not really 18k gallons. Since a fresh fill should not have a significant amount of salt in it.

 

[Ozsplace]

But I even check it against three online sources with the size - 35x15 3.5 shallow and 6.5 deep. Plus I looked up the manufactures spec and it’s 18k on there website too.

 

[jblizzle]

You never filled out your signature, so no way for us to even guess what kind of pool you have. If it is fiberglass or vinyl, then the volume might be pretty well known, but if it is free form plaster, estimates can be off pretty easily.

Did you fill with soft water that would have added salt?

Bottom line, you have now added 2 different chemicals and both overshot your expected target (granted the borate strips are hard to read).

What test kit are you using? What other parameters might need adjusting?
Figure out how much FC a gallon or 2 of bleach should add using PoolMath and see if you overshoot again.

 

[Ozsplace]

It’s a fiberglass pool - and I have the tf test kit as well as the borate test strips they sell.

Is 80 ppm of borates harmful - I can’t find much info on that level - only that 50 is the limit for drinking.

 

[Ozsplace]

Working backwards from 12 bags of salt to 4300ppm of salt would get me a 14,000 gallon pool - but to get to 80ppm of borates it would need 53 pounds of boric acid. I did get the boric acid that was powder - does that make a difference?

 

[JamesW]

Did you actually measure your pool to see if it's the size that it's supposed to be?

Can you measure the salinity of the fill water?

Do you have a picture of the pool?

 

[Ozsplace]

Yeah I measured it the very first day to make sure it was right and it’s 35x15.5. I can grab a picture tomorrow when there is more light. I haven’t measured what the fill water is - i’ll try that tomorrow too.

now the borate test strips - even when I look at the test strip dry (not used) it is lighter than the zero color, meaning it looks like it the strip was used - is that normal?

So confused...

- - - Updated - - -

One thing I didn’t mention is we did the salt on Monday and I did the boric acid yesterday - could it be that I tested too early?

 

[mknauss]

As Jason mentioned above ---

Please add a signature. Read Pool School - Read This BEFORE You Post
Information in your signature will show up each time you post and it makes advice more accurate as we know what equipment we are dealing with.

 

[Ozsplace]

Sig added - tried before but I kept getting a bb code error when I tried to save.

 

[JoyfulNoise]

Just as a side note - those boric acid test strips are notoriously hard to read and they are affected by high chlorine levels. I would not try to use them until you get your FC down to a reasonable level. Even then, they are not very good. My signature has a link to a borate titration test but it’s somewhat involved and requires some extra chemicals that you likely don’t have on hand.

80ppm is not the end of the world for borates. I have had my pool at 60ppm borates in the past and I know of another user that kept theirs at 80ppm. I have four small children that swim a lot and we’re all quite healthy. High borates levels are more of concern if you have animals, especially small dogs, that like to drink from the pool. Studies have shown that a steady and long term diet of borate laden water can cause long term health effects in animals but these studies indicate that the pool would be the primary source of drinking water for the animal in question and that’s somewhat unlikely.

You can read about it here if you haven’t already - Are Borates Safe to Use?