I finished my BYOP build and started up the pool in late May. For the last several months, I've had the company who helped with startup manage the chemistry for me so I didn't have to jump right in. The goal was to have the experts handle this while I learned more about chemistry and became comfortable managing it on my own.
After asking more questions, I was able to get the last 3 weeks of logs which saw pH consistently at 8.8 and TA consistently at 160ppm. After this, I came to the decision I should take it over. Over the course of Fri-Mon last week, I added 3 gallons of MA (on top of the 2 added on Friday by the former pool guy). Each time, I used pool math to lower the pH to 7-7.2 and turned on the water fall and sheers to aerate to drive pH up. I was able to get TA to current level of 80 as of yesterday and pH has climbed each day to a reading of 8.0 as of this morning.
While the CYA from the pool guy shows 50, I tried the test and I could still see the black dot with the vial full (although it was blurry) which leads me to believe the CYA level is 20 or lower. I plan to rerun this test this afternoon as this one feels subjective. Salt is at 3950 vs the 3600 ideal for IC60. FC tested 2 days ago at 3. CH tested 2 days ago at 450 and water temp was around 86 degrees.
While it seems I've already been able to get things in way better shape, the pH has gone from 7.5 2 days ago to 7.8 yesterday (without running waterfall/sheers for hours) and around 8.0 today. Could low CYA be contributing to the pH rise and high acid demand? I usually run my pump all day around 2250rpm and the salt cell was recently (Friday) adjusted in the intellicenter from 34% down to 20%. I also just adjusted the schedule to only turn on the waterfall for 30 min twice a day instead of 1 hour twice a day to reduce aeration. Pool is not in direct sunlight all day as I have trees and a cabana that shade it for much of the day. Borates were applied but I want to measure for myself and just ordered the reagents for the drop test that should arrive in the next week.
I just ordered some stabilizer and plan to apply via skimmer sock method after retesting CYA. Any other advice?
After asking more questions, I was able to get the last 3 weeks of logs which saw pH consistently at 8.8 and TA consistently at 160ppm. After this, I came to the decision I should take it over. Over the course of Fri-Mon last week, I added 3 gallons of MA (on top of the 2 added on Friday by the former pool guy). Each time, I used pool math to lower the pH to 7-7.2 and turned on the water fall and sheers to aerate to drive pH up. I was able to get TA to current level of 80 as of yesterday and pH has climbed each day to a reading of 8.0 as of this morning.
While the CYA from the pool guy shows 50, I tried the test and I could still see the black dot with the vial full (although it was blurry) which leads me to believe the CYA level is 20 or lower. I plan to rerun this test this afternoon as this one feels subjective. Salt is at 3950 vs the 3600 ideal for IC60. FC tested 2 days ago at 3. CH tested 2 days ago at 450 and water temp was around 86 degrees.
While it seems I've already been able to get things in way better shape, the pH has gone from 7.5 2 days ago to 7.8 yesterday (without running waterfall/sheers for hours) and around 8.0 today. Could low CYA be contributing to the pH rise and high acid demand? I usually run my pump all day around 2250rpm and the salt cell was recently (Friday) adjusted in the intellicenter from 34% down to 20%. I also just adjusted the schedule to only turn on the waterfall for 30 min twice a day instead of 1 hour twice a day to reduce aeration. Pool is not in direct sunlight all day as I have trees and a cabana that shade it for much of the day. Borates were applied but I want to measure for myself and just ordered the reagents for the drop test that should arrive in the next week.
I just ordered some stabilizer and plan to apply via skimmer sock method after retesting CYA. Any other advice?