So you want to add borates to your pool--Why and How

Jump to latest Follow Reply
Status
Not open for further replies.
Finally getting my TA down. It has taken a couple of weeks to move from 100. Last measurement was 80 and I'm hoping that the dose of acid today will do the trick. I'm anxious to try this borate thing to see if it really will help control my PH drift! 20 Mule Team boxes are waiting the garage! (Had to hit 1 Wal-Mart and 2 Krogers to get the full amount needed.)

Question: is adding all that acid safe for the salt cell (and other equipment)? Should I lower the chlorine generation down to 0% until the acid is diluted? I recently spent $700 replacing the salt cell, so I'd hate to damage it. FC is at 4.5 and TC is 0, so I could go at least a day and I suspect the chlorine level would be fine.

Thanks again for a great pool resource! I've learned more on this site in a few weeks than in the past 4 years of maintaining my pool!
 
Just tested PH and TA 24 hours after prescribed Borax treatment. I have to admit - after years of maintaining a fairly rigorous water balance schedule, I was pretty nervous about adding so much acid/borax all at once. Much to my surprise, PH and TA were just about where they were prior to the treatment! (PH went from 7.4 to 7.6 / TA stayed between 70 and 80.) I'll wait another 24 hours and test the borax levels, but the 1st test was passed with flying colors! Kudos to the creator of the formula!
 
48 hours into the borate treatment and I can attest that the water truly is more clear. I've always had very clear water (or so I thought), but if wearing goggles, I could see dust-like particles floating. After borate treatment, there is virtually nothing in the water. It's amazingly clear! It seems to also have the softer feel that others have reported, but that's more subjective.

Now for the disappointing news. My primary reason for adding borates was to stabilize my PH, which has constantly drifted higher regardless of the TA levels. 24 hours after adding the borates, PH was 7.6 and TA was somewhere between 70 and 80. (After 7 drops of the reagent, water turned pinkish, but took full 8 drops to turn completely red. I don't know how to gauge the lighter tint of red.)

48 hours after adding borates with levels testing at 50, PH has again drifted up to 7.8 with TA now fully at 80. Bummer. I'm hoping that the drift is because I've been running the pump for 48 hours straight, causing aeration via the SWG and fountains that I'm using to cool the pool. Once I get back to a normal schedule, I'll see if things stabilize and will report back if so.

In the end, I'm still happy I added the borates, but early indications are that containing PH drift is not panning out for me.
 
Completed the conversion this weekend - It was hard at first to get the borax to dissolve, but I figured out a short cut with our riverflow system - pouring the borax into the stream immediately dissolved it.

One very cool side effect, the bees and wasps are gone after a few days. It's so dry in Austin that it started to become a problem.
 
Many thanks to this list for all the advice on adding Borates! After reading most of this thread, I decided to take the plunge. I have had persistant problems with algae and dumped quite a lot of chlorine in trying to clear up the water. Finally, I decided to see if borates would help.

Unlike the suggestion of adding acid first, I added the borax first, well that is 4 boxes in 30K gallons of pool water, AND then super chlorinated. The combination of high pH and high chlorine did the trick, green came out. I then added 4 boxes at a time, followed by a gallon of the high strength muriatic acid, and ran the pump. Now after about 20 boxes and 5 gallons of muriatic acid, I cannot believe the results.

The water is crystal clear, a bit blue, and I can see the details on the bottom of the pool in 8 feet of water. Simply amazing!!

There are multiple success stories here, but I wanted to add mine as it relates to stubborn algae.
I had tried multiple different products, none worked very well. Raising the pH with borate, coupled with superchlorination simply did the trick.

Not sure why the recommedation is there to add acid first, but thought I would share my experience for others with the same problem. Try adding the borax first. I guess the muriatic acid is also adding quite a bit of chlorine too.

Anyway, never had better water, and as stated elsewhere, my chlorine consumption has gone down by at least 1/3.

Thanks to the list for all the help and helping me have sparkling pool water

Ed
 
emichelson , welcome to TFP!

Adding borax first is an extremely bad idea. You were very lucky. When adding borax first the resulting period of high PH can cause all kinds of major/expensive problems, including metal stains and calcium scaling, as well as a number of lesser problems such as calcium clouding.

Also, high PH doesn't help you fight algae. The only way it would have helped is if your PH was way way too low to begin with. It is much more likely that the increased borate level is what helped you get rid of the algae. Of course, you could have gotten rid of the algae without borates if you had been shocking properly as described in Pool School.
 
I found this very interesting, but haven't read thru all the infomation yet. My first question from going this route is that I have a 1 year old baby who is starting off in the pool this summer. He likes to taste the water. Will this be safe for him, or should I wait until he's old enough that he will understand not to drink the water in the pool?
 

Enjoying this content?

Support TFP with a donation.

Give Support
My pool was remodeled last summer so it has been a year now since my plaster was redone with pebblefina. Before adding borates to my pool, I used to test every day or every other day, and was constantly adding acid to bring my pH down. I never let it get over 7.8, always brought it back down to the 7.2 to 7.4 range as recommended to avoid the white stuff in my liquidator.

I added borates to my pool in early June in the hopes of stabilizing my pH. It hasn't worked. I am still having to add acid twice a week to get my pH down to the 7.2 to 7.4 range -- the only difference is now I have to add more acid to get it to that level. My TA is usually between 60 and 80 -- right now its at 80. I test that twice a week too to make sure it doesn't go down to far. I also check the CSI to make sure its toward the negative side of 0 (this was also recommended to control the white stuff); it usually ranges around -.2 to -.15 after adding the acid. My other numbers are FC 4, CH 425, CYA 30, Borate 50.

I guess what I expected after adding the borates was that the pH would remain at the level I put it, at least for a week or two before it starts crawling back up the scale... but it hasn't. Why not? Isn't that what is meant by the term "stabilize"? What should I be doing differently?
 
You shouldn't lower PH that much. The lower PH is, the faster it goes up. Likewise, you shouldn't raise TA back up to 80. The higher TA is, the faster PH goes up. See if PH will settle around 7.7 when TA is 50 or 60.
 
Marauder said:
Ok, just wanted to make sure, since in the begining it was stated to make sure that animals don't drink a lot from it.
Click to expand...
As described in this post, the EPA set a conservative limit for borates in pools based on the no observed adverse effect amount for dogs drinking borates every day and then had a factor of 100 safety margin of exposure on top of that since there were no specific studies on humans. This translates to a 1-year old boy weighing 9.6 kg (21 pounds) drinking about 3-1/2 teaspoons (about 1 tablespoon) every day. Without the margin of exposure, this is over 7 cups per day.

The warning for male dogs we give is conservative and based on their drinking a lot more water if they are in the pool every day. The no observed adverse effect amount (no margin of exposure needed since the studies were on dogs) is 7-1/2 cups of 50 ppm borates water per day for a 22 pound dog.

Mammals are able to process borates since they are found in food (average intake for adults is 1.2 mg so equivalent to about 5 teaspoons of 50 ppm borates pool water), but there is a limit to the amount that can be processed per day, hence the limits.
 
Ok, so I am looking to go this route. I need to add salt this weekend and turn on the SWG.

Would I be ok going with the borates this weekend, or wait a little while and get the SWG stable before hand?

With adding liquid chlorine, I am having difficulty with keeping chlorine in the pool, my PH is always needing to be knocked down, its at 8.2 right now with TA at 140.
 
Marauder said:
Would I be ok going with the borates this weekend, or wait a little while and get the SWG stable before hand?

With adding liquid chlorine, I am having difficulty with keeping chlorine in the pool, my PH is always needing to be knocked down, its at 8.2 right now with TA at 140.
Click to expand...
I would get your TA WAY DOWN before adding the borates. If you had trouble keeping your pH lower with liquid chlorine, your going to have a heck of a time keeping it down with an SWG which is even worse in that regard. The source of the problem is your high TA level and its easier to get that lowered before adding the Borates -- easier in the sense that getting the pH down initially for the first step takes less acid. See Lowering Total Alkalinity.
 
Oh, the replastering is going to cause a HUGE pH rise that over the next weeks and months will drop off, but could be noticeable for up to a year, possibly more. So just figure that you're going to be needing to add lots of acid for a while. The curing of plaster releases calcium hydroxide into the water and that significantly raises the pH and also increases the CH level over time.
 

Enjoying this content?

Support TFP with a donation.

Give Support
Status
Not open for further replies.
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