pH and CYA affect "clarity" or "shine"?

[dfwnoob]

I was just reminded of this by YippeeSkippy in another thread:

Actually, just the fact you don't have CCs doesn't mean you don't have something in the pool. An Overnight Chlorine Loss Test is helpful to rule out something "living" like algae. Overnight Chlorine Loss Test

WHen my water doesn't "sparkle" I find my pH is high. Once I lower it with muriatic acid the sparkle returns. Try going down to pH of 7.4-7.6 and see if that does the trick?

Maddie

I've always noticed this, but I thought I was crazy. I swear that after adding muriatic acid, my water ALWAYS looks just a little bit better. I think the same thing if the CYA gets low and I add a bit more through the sock method. I can't really think of any explanation for why this is. Is it just placebo? Am I insane?

 

[Mdragger88]

The thing about the water looking dull with high ph makes sense to me because high ph can cause some calcium carbonate precipitation if ch is high I believe.@JoyfulNoise can probably really elaborate on that sciencey stuff. But the low cya causing such a thing doesn’t make alot of sense to me. It is a little acidic so perhaps it’s doing the ph a favor & contributing to sparkliness when added??
I am quite lucky in that i have a low ch & don’t need to maintain a higher value due to my vinyl liner/no heater & my ph doesn’t really rise (quite boring really ) so I have never experienced any of those reasons for dullness. I swear though that when I add liquid chlorine the pool looks xtra sparkly in that area!
Or It may all be in our heads
Like, maybe you feel u have neglected the pool,
so, to you it looks suboptimal but once you take steps to remedy this you feel the pool is happier so it looks better in your eyes?
I think even a suboptimal tfp pool still probably blows most other pools out of the water

 

[JoyfulNoise]

I would say it mostly in your heads with respect to pH and clarity but there are some very scholarly pieces of work on pH, point of zero charge (PZC), and colloid stability … As my college professors would often say -

“it is left up to the student for homework to derive the full set of equations and solutions to the problems on the blackboard …”

 

[dfwnoob]

Thank you! All I need to do now is get my chemistry degree so I can understand "point of zero change" and "colloid stability"! Unfortunately I was really bad at math in high school.

I'll take this to mean it's 95% in my head, which I'll just accept. lol

 

[SoDel]

I’ve also noticed in the past some correlation between the water not looking quite as spectacular as usual and it hitting the pH level where it’s time to add acid (8.0+). For about the first four months of managing the pool, I obsessed over every detail. Now it’s more of a hobby. By next year it will be a chore. At this point unless I can test objectively for whatever seems to pop into my mind, or until my wife ever notices something isn’t quite right, it’s right enough lol. Upshot, maybe find a disinterested third party observer whom you trust to give an occasional brutally honest assessment. I’d bet it’s perfect and you’re just being too hard on yourself .