High CH for about a year.

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Morketh

Morketh

0
Oct 17, 2018
113
KATY/TX
I've had a house with a pool for about a year now and I've been using the ColorQ Pro 7 test kit. Little did I know that the CH test is highly inaccurate with the ColorQ. I've been adding Calcium Chloride (bags of SnowJoe Ice Melt) for the entire year that I've had this pool.
I've added one 25 pound bag of CaCl per month or so. Recently I couldn't seem to get the reading to around 250 ppm.

Someone recommended I get a TF-100 test kit before I add any further CaCl.
It came in today and I tested it and my reading is 1025 ppm CH!!!!!!!!
The ColorQ shows 117 ppm CH.
41 drops I put in there before it turned from pink to bluish. 41!!!!

Is that possible? This might mean I've had insanely high levels of CH for an entire year.

High CH causes a cloudiness in the pool water I've read. Well my water is clear as a bell. That is until I brush it or run my hand across the sides of the pool. Dust/chalk/clouds stir up quickly when I run my hands across the sides of the pool walls or when I brush it. If the pump is not running I can cloud up the entire pool and no matter what if I brush the spa I can cloud it up quickly and takes about 30 mins to dissipate.
Is that the cloudiness that is referred to? I was under the impression that the water would be constantly cloudy no matter what if you had high CH, not when you brush the pool or rub your hands across the surface of the pool. That was never made clear to me.
 
The calcium is probably trying to attach to the surfaces. You disturb it before some of it can harden I suspect. Regardless, if you tested over 1,000 CH, it's probably time to consider a large water exchange. Otherwise, you will have a difficult time preventing scale from forming if it isn't already a problem.

Since you just got your TF-100, you should post a full set of water results so we can evaluate everything. We can help give you a good roadmap to follow.
 
Texas Splash said:
The calcium is probably trying to attach to the surfaces. You disturb it before some of it can harden I suspect. Regardless, if you tested over 1,000 CH, it's probably time to consider a large water exchange. Otherwise, you will have a difficult time preventing scale from forming if it isn't already a problem.

Since you just got your TF-100, you should post a full set of water results so we can evaluate everything. We can help give you a good roadmap to follow.
Click to expand...

I'll work on the test results this week and get back.
 
Well, you confirmed my suspicion. That CH is too high and you're fighting a battle on scale. The water is over-saturated with it and it's trying to attach to anything it can. The only way to lower CH is to exchange water. If you can do that soon that would be great, however outside the Houston area, perhaps known for ground saturation, be careful about how much water you exchange at one time. You don't want the pool shell to try and lift.

If you simply can't drain right away, do two things - first, lower the pH ASAP to about 7.0. When it creeps back up to 7.8, knock it back down to 7.0. This is doing two things. a lower pH helps to compensate for the high CH, and all that acid is lowering the TA which is also too high. Keep doing that acid trick until the TA is down to about 60-70. The second thing - add some stabilizer. You need a CYA of at least 40 right now to protect the chlorine from the sun.

If you are able to exchange water to lower the CH, then don't waste chemicals as noted above, just dump and refill. Then re-test and we'll go from there. I would like to see your CH anywhere between 300 - 500. That would be much better than what you have now. So think it over and let us know if you have any questions. Make sure to update your signature with your new test kit. :goodjob:
 
Oh so when you do the CYA test, if you fill the tube completely full and can still see the black dot a bit then that means you have a very low CYA?

Alright I will start draining and refilling little bit each day. I am not going to drain too much though.
I did do a CH test on my tap water and it was 125 out of the hose so as I refill should drop quite a bit.
 
Doing small drain and refills will use many times more water to lower your CH. If your water is very cheap, go that way. If not, review the water exchange process.
 
Okay cool, I read the draining guide. I have a DE filter with a MPV. I set it to waste and I am 90% sure that drains directly to the sewer when I do that.
When I swim and the filter is on I feel water being sucked from the 4 drains at the bottom of the pool while also sucking from the skimmers so I am assuming that if the water does get below my skimmers that it will pull from the main drain. Also I believe my pump shuts off automatically if water is not going through it, though I will definitely watch if I decide to drain below the skimmer line.

Texas Splash brings up a good point about my area and ground saturation. I have never drained the pool a large amount because I am scared of the pool popping up.
The pool if 3-5 feet deep (15,000 gallons).
Is there a cautionary level that you should not drain passed if you are worried about the pool popping out? Im thinking about draining somewhere between 1-2 feet of water and see where that gets me, wouldn't think I would have to worry about the pool popping out at those levels.
I can't find anywhere in my HOA or fort bend county that tells me how much I can drain of my pool to the sewer. I think I read a long time ago 12 gallons per minute is what they want you to keep it around. I was just doing 57GPM for 7 minutes. I'll probably tone it down quite a bit.
 
Up to you, but I would not use a $1000 pool pump to drain water. Neither would I drain a pool in Katy TX. I would do a water exchange, with a $60 sump pump.
 

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mknauss said:
Up to you, but I would not use a $1000 pool pump to drain water. Neither would I drain a pool in Katy TX. I would do a water exchange, with a $60 sump pump.
Click to expand...
Roger that, ordered one of the recommended sump pumps. I'll try it out whenever it gets here.

My auto-fill is in the deep end and my sewage drain is near the shallow end so I was going to put the sump pump at the bottom of the shallow end and drain to sewer while filling in deep end.
Water temp should be close to the same temps.
 
With high CH your pool water weighs more per unit volume than your fill water. So you should follow the process written in the Wiki article of taking the water out of the deep end and putting it in the shallow end.
 
Follow Marty's advice. He's the man when it comes to drainless water exchanges. I've seen many success stories. I just thought I'd add a little reassurance from a guy down in the weeds.

Best wishes!
 
Alright the pump is draining the water at 10 GPM. Poolmath wants me to drain/exchange 60% of my water and for a 15k gallon pool that would be around 9000 gallons and would take around 15 hours. I am going to drain around 5,000 gallons and it will take around 8.3 hours so will finish about 2am for me.

My only worry now is this is going straight into my main drain to the sewer and if it fills up it could back up into my house (toilets/baths/sinks/showers) and I'm not exactly sure I have a way of knowing when/if that will happen, just hoping everything goes good.
I'm going to be checking it every 30 minutes to see if anything crazy is going on.
 
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If you only exchange 1/3 of your pool water to fresh, your CH will still be well above 700 ppm. Your fill water I suspect has 150 ppm CH or so.
 
Yea I checked the fill water, it is 125 ppm CH. I just checked my water 3 hours into this and it is still at 1000 CH so nothing changed so far.
Honestly have no idea what the water bill is going to be changing 5,000 gallons of water, so if I can get it down to 700 ppm CH now and then late next month do this again to get it down lower then I'm happy with that.
I've likely been running this pool at ultra high levels of CH for a year, what's another month.
 
I’m sorry I missed this thread, Morketh, I would have loaned you our sump pump. Marty couldn’t believe that I haven’t added any fill water to the pool since I opened it and started testing this year. We have had so much rain...but I have a feeling this year will be different bc we didn’t have our April showers...
 

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