High TA, CH but pool looks great

Jump to latest Follow Reply
S

salinda

0
Bronze Supporter
LifeTime Supporter
Feb 25, 2008
159
Los Gatos, CA
Pool Size
37000
Surface
Plaster
Chlorine
Salt Water Generator
SWG Type
Pentair Intellichlor IC-60
Hi everyone! I'm in the Bay Area and have been managing the pool myself for years with the help of TFP. My pool looks great this year. I've been doing my usual adding ⅓-½ gallon acid 1x/week. Salt was measured as good by my pool company who I only employ for repairs when they were here. I replenished my TF-Test kit with all new chemicals/reagents and finally ran my first test. Uh Oh. Everything good but CH and TA are sky-high. Unfortunately, we have a drought where I live, so water exchange or drain/refill are not really an option. Should I just live with it and manage CSI? I normally run with CH over 800 and it's fine, but my TA is high too this year. For now, I'm going to run the pH pretty low, around 7.2, and rerun the tests in a few weeks. Is that a good plan? My pool is crystal clear.
The only other thing I need to adjust is free chlorine and CYA. de-scaling my chlorinator and adding CYA ASAP. I also have liquid chlorine to available to add, which I'll do to get Cl up quickly.
==========================================
Salinda pool
------------------------------------------
Build Type: Plaster
Volume: 37000 gallons
------------------------------------------
Latest Test Result Summary:
FC: 2.0 (10 hours ago)
CC: 0.0 (10 hours ago)
pH: 7.4 (10 hours ago)
TA: 140 (10 hours ago)
CH: 1100 (10 hours ago)
CYA: 35 (10 hours ago)
SALT: 4000 (10 hours ago)
TEMPERATURE: 83° (10 hours ago)
CSI: 0.42 (10 hours ago)
==========================================
 
Rancho Cost-a-Lotta said:
Have you looked into reverse osmosis in your area? Cost is about $600 in my area.

Are you prohibited from doing a drain and refill, or is it just cost prohibitive?
Click to expand...
It’s cool st prohibitive plus not really the “right” thing to do. I suspect the lack of rain this winter is partially responsible. I measured the fill water. I think the CH of the fill water is around 180
 
I think you have a good understanding of what your issues and what will eventually need to be done. In the meantime, you'll need lower your TA to get your CSI into a lower range to mitigate scaling. Aeration will help to lower TA, but you need to get into the 60 range to get into negative CSI territory. With a spa, you could set your returns to overflow into the pool to create some good aeration and pick up a truck load of MA. I don't believe a CH of 1100 will be manageable. With fill water at 180 ppm, you'll be fighting a losing battle.

@mknauss battles high CH on continual basis. Let's see if he has some advice.
 
I’ve lived with CH 600-800 for years. usually we get enough rain in the winter to dilute it back down every year. Not this year. I’ll work on TA. My CSI is not bad but is positive. I didn’t think that was a huge issue. I’ll turn on spa overflow and bubbler in spa overnight.
 
The only way to reduce CH is to drain and replace with lower CH water or to use reverse osmosis service.
Your SWCG will be very difficult to keep clean from scale if you have a CH of 1100 and a positive CSI.

Do you have a water softener for your home? Once you drain and refill the pool with tap water you then use softened water for make up water due to evaporation.
 
salinda said:
. For now, I'm going to run the pH pretty low, around 7.2, and rerun the tests in a few weeks. Is that a good plan? My pool is crystal clear.
Click to expand...
if you are trying to make an adjustment in your chem levels.. you are going to need to test more often than every few weeks to see if you on the right track. More like every few days or two depending on what you are doing. If you planing on getting your TA down by doing the MA/Aeration dance you'll need to test every few days.. at least that is what I have to do.
Yeah.. us NorCal residents didn't get very much rain this Winter and I know I didn't get the typical rain dilution I normally get. So for the others out there.. I think the Gov just declared an official drought season, so there will likely be restrictions on doing things like watering our lawn, flushing your toilet and draining your pool for whatever reason. If you can make it to winter you can use the rain to your advantage..by draining water from you pool and letting the rain fill it back up again. It kind of maximizes the captured rain for dilution.
 
I’m looking into an RO service. Also descaling my saltwater chlorinate. I don’t have a water softener for my home. Thank you.
 

Enjoying this content?

Support TFP with a donation.

Give Support
mguzzy said:
if you are trying to make an adjustment in your chem levels.. you are going to need to test more often than every few weeks to see if you on the right track. More like every few days or two depending on what you are doing. If you planing on getting your TA down by doing the MA/Aeration dance you'll need to test every few days.. at least that is what I have to do.
Yeah.. us NorCal residents didn't get very much rain this Winter and I know I didn't get the typical rain dilution I normally get. So for the others out there.. I think the Gov just declared an official drought season, so there will likely be restrictions on doing things like watering our lawn, flushing your toilet and draining your pool for whatever reason. If you can make it to winter you can use the rain to your advantage..by draining water from you pool and letting the rain fill it back up again. It kind of maximizes the captured rain for dilution.
Click to expand...
The winter rain usually takes care of the issue for me. I’m looking into RO service in the area and I think I found one. For making the TA adjustment, I’ll definitely measure frequently. I left the waterfall and aeration/jet pump on overnight and plan on remeasuring tomorrow. I’ll add more acid as needed.
 
Last edited:
I scheduled the RO service but it's $$$ and won't happen until June. My husband and I are toying with water exchange. Fill water is TA 180, CH 150, PH 7.8. Not great, but I can make that work. I think the water will cost around $300 and we are only on voluntary restrictions right now.
 
salinda said:
I scheduled the RO service but it's $$$ and won't happen until June. My husband and I are toying with water exchange. Fill water is TA 180, CH 150, PH 7.8. Not great, but I can make that work. I think the water will cost around $300 and we are only on voluntary restrictions right now.
Click to expand...
The exchange should work well. Have you read Draining? - Further Reading If the water temperature of your fill water is much different than the pool water, that will take precedence over the CH level.
 
Also, in your climate, I doubt you need to exchange. I would think you can just do a quick drain with a rental sump pump from Home Depot and refill it.
 
  • Like
Reactions: proavia and mguzzy
My fill water is: TA 180, CH 150, PH 7.8. I’m concerned about high TA. I’m wondering if I should just go with RO treatment.
 
mguzzy said:
How much would it cost to replace half your water? And how much is the RO gizmo that isn't available for awhile? By my guess with your current CH I think that would put you at around 650.. that should be good enough to get you to winter.
Click to expand...
All good thoughts. It's not really the cost. It would be cheaper to drain and refill half the water. I always get nervous about my plaster though when I've done that in the past. It's getting older and I'm afraid of cracks etc. Even though it's drought here, the water table is fairly high where I live, which is clay soil and used to be an orchard.
I do have some good news--I took my water for retest at my local pool store (very local, not Leslie's). They use the same systems as I do and use mostly liquid chlorine, saltwater chlorinators, and acid on the pools they manage. They got much lower CH and TA than I did. I don't trust his TA because I counted a different number of drops than he did for the number of green drops he put in. I think he put in too few. I came home and retested. It is still high, but not sky high (I've been pushing pH to the low side to lower TA). Same with CH, but very difficult with fading endpoint (as it always has been).
I'm going to go ahead with RO treatment because I've honestly struggled with high CH for years now, but it likely won't have to be treated for as many hours as previously expected. (I've added some liquid chlorine to shock the pool since this test. I'll be adding acid in a few minutes.)

Here is what I get now:
==========================================
Salinda pool
------------------------------------------
Build Type: Plaster
Volume: 37000 gallons
------------------------------------------
Latest Test Result Summary:
FC: 3.6 (17 minutes ago)
CC: 0.6 (17 minutes ago)
pH: 7.6 (17 minutes ago)
TA: 100 (17 minutes ago)
CH: 830 (17 minutes ago)
CYA: 38 (17 minutes ago)
SALT: 4000 (17 minutes ago)
TEMPERATURE: 77° (17 minutes ago)
CSI: 0.29 (17 minutes ago)
==========================================
 

Enjoying this content?

Support TFP with a donation.

Give Support
You must log in or register to reply here.
Thread Status
Hello , This thread has been inactive for over 60 days. New postings here are unlikely to be seen or responded to by other members. For better visibility, consider Starting A New Thread.
Top Bottom
Back
Jump to latest Follow Reply