How long before we know where our new pool wants the water balance to be?

Steve-D

Bronze Supporter
Jul 10, 2020
161
SW Boston Suburbs
Pool Size
20000
Surface
Plaster
Chlorine
Salt Water Generator
SWG Type
Pentair Intellichlor IC-40
I've heard it said here that a pool will tend to "find its levels." How true is that and if so, how long should we expect before we can say that our pool has found those preferred levels?

In our case we have a new Gunite/Plaster SWG pool first filled in early May with the SWG turned on in late May.

Salt is too high (4600/4700) thanks to a miscalculation by the installers so I'm waiting for expected rains in the next 2 days before I drain an inch or 2 by siphon to provide some dilution from the rain. I'm told [edit: in these forums] that the high salt won't damage the (IC40) cell so we're not planning on aggressively draining to correct that.

CYA has held at 50 since the last addition and I know I need to add a little more stabilizer to push CYA to the high side of 60 but I want to wait until a bit is drained for the salt issue before I put in more stabilizer.

FC has been manageable and we're still figuring out what to expect from mostly continuous pump runtimes at various FC % settings in the IC40.

pH has seen normal/expected fluctuations but in the last month we have never seen it go lower than 6.8 or higher than 8.0 (each at one reading on one day only). Otherwise pH has been kept between 7.2 and 7.8 with only occasional (MA) interventions to adjust it down.

TA has also been remarkably consistent at 100, again only dropping to 90 or hitting 110 for one reading on one day. The few times we've used MA to lower pH it had little to no impact on the TA level.
CH has also been consistent only varying from 240 in one test over the last month.

If our pool is at the point of "settling in" ...
1. How important is it to bump up my CH...maybe aiming for 350-400?
2. TA seems to like 100 and none of the MA additions done so far have really affected that. Do I need to more aggressively work at getting TA down to or below 80? Based on what I've done to manage pH so far it will likely drop pH to where it will require intervention to raise just the pH back into the 7.6-7.8 range?

Because of the well CH for the well water tested at 230...I haven't received results yet of a commercial test for metals or other things in the water. We have a well with hard water so aggressive draining and refilling is only a last resort for us and so I hesitate to add things that require draining and refilling to correct.
 
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Sounds like your pH is already quite predictable, so you may be over the "curing hump". But to your questions:
1 - With a consistent pH between 7.2 - 7.8, a CH of about 350 is fine.
2 - A TA of 100 isn't a deal breaker. Many pools need a lower TA because the pH tends to climb tooo high/too fast. But if your pH is fairly stable, it's not a problem.
 
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