Seeing a little foam

[drkstr]

Hello everyone. I managed to take off my solid cover couple weeks ago been mixing and testing water as weather permits, its rainy and cold here in the middle of Illinois. Ive noticed some foaming, my water was replaced last fall with the new liner.
My latest test are below.
FC 5.6
CC .2
PH 7.6
TA 80
CH 50
CYA 80

I added some borax to counter ph drop when I added the CYA plan on doing the Borax / MA soon.
I'm guessing that the low CH is contributing to my foaming issue. My make up water is CH 50. I have some extremely hard well water available but TA in it tests off the chart as does the CH so really hesitant to use it as Ive had to deal with that for the last 20 years in this pool.
I am using 8.25% bleach for chlorine until I get the swg installed. Any thoughts, suggestions?

 

[Texas Splash]

I'm looking at your low CH as a possible culprit as well. Instead of using the well water, which might have iron anyways (boooo), you can grab some calcium from the hardware store. Try increasing in 50 ppm increments until you get closer to the TFP recommended minimum for your SWG pool. Since you don't seem to be using the SWG at the moment though, just treat your pool as a non-SWG pool for FC purposes and increase the FC with bleach a bit more. Once you start the SWG again when the water temp allows, then you can let the FC fall a little bit. As always, refer to the TFP Recommended Level chart (link below) and you'll be fine. Overall not bad numbers for just removing the cover. Nice work.

 

[AusJohn]

Foaming is typically caused by reduced surface tension in the water. Just about anything that you add to the water reduces surface tension. Pure water has the highest surface tension. All dissolved salts reduce surface tension as the ions get between the water molecules at the air water interface and reduce the strength of the hydrogen bonding between the water molecules. Sea foam occurs mostly due to the salt concentration although there can be alginates from seaweed that contribute too. Adding more calcium is not likely to help unless you are precipitating out soaps then you get a sticky scum. Quick question, if you recently added borates and and CYA, with the borate used to avoid pH drop from the CYA, so just a little, did you happen to accidentally add Arm and Hammer laundry powder instead of Arm and Hammer Borax ?

If so, chlorine will break the detergent down over time.

 

[drkstr]

Thanks for the thoughts guys. AusJohn it was 20 mule team borax, used about a box two boxes since I got the pool started. Plan is to bring FC up a bit more its another rainy day today. I did notice a bit of a scum line on the skimmer when i put on a skimmer sock this morning. One of the things I have learned from having a pool and mesh winter cover is to get to it early as possible in the spring. The use of a solid cover this winter has paid off big as I uncovered a clear pool with no debris in the bottom. Kicked the chlorine soon as the ice melted and things are looking good.