Year deep new pool owner

[Petervmistretta]

One year in…. TBF methods have my pool beautiful all the time.
However, So I’ve spent a year now continually fighting rising PH. I’m perfectly fine dealing with this, but wondering if adding borates would help this battle? There are no water features aerating the pool, but I still end up with 8.0 PH if I don’t continually add acid. Will borates help this issue? Just curious to hear others thoughts.

 

[an1vrsy]

How are you testing? What is your TA?

 

[AK-]

Can borates help? Indirectly it may.

Aeration can happen due to splash, swim, rain any other activity that produces some bubbles. The higher the TA the faster the pH will drift up (that is why you were asked about your TA).

Borates make slightly more difficult to lower your pH. On a 10k gallon pool, assuming a TA of 120, pH of 8 and use of 20baume MA, you would need 12oz of MA to lower your pH to 7.6 and that would lower your TA by 7.4. With 50ppm of borates you would need 27oz of MA to lower the pH to the same 7.6, but your TA would lower by about 11.

There are also some concerns about use of borates, specially if you have pets that usually drink water from your pool.

You should also test your fill water as it may be the cause of your high TA.

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[Petervmistretta]

Should have also mentioned the pool was resurfaced with pebbletec one year ago also. I try to keep my TA around 70, but it’s a struggle due to the ph rise. I used to have water features, but turned them off to eliminate aeration. I think I’m realizing I just need to keep my TA more around the 50 range…. Otherwise I just constantly do the acid/TA dance.

I test with a Taylor kit. Plumbed in acid and chlorine injection pumps. Automated it all through “home assistant”, so my bleach and acid additions are done hourly throughout the day in tiny doses, based on what it needs.

Before I added 5 lb of boric acid, I let TA get down to 50. Then added boric acid. I’m wondering if the lowering of the TA actually fixed my PH issue, rather than the addition of borates?

Sorry for the long post, but I’ve always been afraid of a low TA due to all the writing on the heater that 100 TA is recommended….

 

[mknauss]

but I’ve always been afraid of a low TA due to all the writing on the heater that 100 TA is recommended….

ph is what matters to the heater. They put that on there as when a person uses trichlor, very low pH happens and if the TA is at least 100, they know the pH cannot get below 7 for long.

 

[Petervmistretta]

That’s always what I figured, just wasn’t confident enough in my logic. Thank you! 50-60 TA it is for me