Raising Total Alkalinity

[P00LNerd]

I fell victim to Taylor's vague instructions, on testing for alkalinity. I was counting drops to change from green to red (per the instructions in the kit), rather than drop count until it stopped turning redder (per this forum and YouTube). The result is that my efforts to target and hold 100 - 120 ppm (per Frog recommendations), really had me at 140 ppm. Now that I've switched from Frog recommendations to Pool Math recommendations, I'm receiving instruction to get the alkalinity way down to 60 - 80.

So, I've been trying to lower it with muriatic acid (31.45% / 20° Be), then aerating to bring the pH back up. It's working, in principle, but after a week and a gallon of product, I've only managed to drop the TA about 10 points, to 130 ppm.

So, forecasting out to a target 70 ppm, I'm looking at 7 gallons of 31.45% muriatic acid?!? Seems like an awful lot of a very nasty chemical.

Am I doing this right, or am I missing something?

Thanks!

 

[PoolStored]

Lowering TA is a process. Our general advice, if your TA is below 150 or so, to ignore TA and just manage pH.

When you pH gets to 8, lower it to 7.6. When it rises again to 8, lower to 7.6. When your TA gets to 60-80, then stop lowering to 7.6...your pH should be fairly stable between 7.8 and 8.0.

You should test your fill water. If you have high TA, then this will be an ongoing issue.

If the frequency of your MA additions is too much for you, then here is a thread for you...

Lowering Total Alkalinity (TA) Quickly with the Acid Aeration Method

Thought I'd make a post that might help others. We've had quite a few members this year with high TA, and I've been typing the same information over and over. I'm going to post this so I can link it to help others. High TA can cause rapid pH rise. High TA is typically caused by high TA fill...

www.troublefreepool.com

 

[P00LNerd]

Thanks, PoolStored! Yeah, the advice in that thread is exactly what I've been following, minus the sump pump. I put a shower contraption on one of my returns, and it has been working quite well to raise pH back up after an MA addition. I'm just surprised how much MA it is really taking, to make such a small change in TA, although I'm really not sure what I had expected.

I'll test the TA of my fill water, just to know. But I haven't really added much water yet this year, and I believe I started the season around TA = 80 ppm. I was intentionally adding Alka-Plus early in the season, trying to get it up to 100-120, per pool store recommendations, while using a bad test method.