What Causes Aeration?
Aeration happens anytime bubbles or ripples form in the water.
Aeration can occur from:
- Splashing
- Spa spillovers
- Waterfalls
- Sheer descents
- Bubblers
- Fountains
- Return jets flow pointing up
- Rain
When is Aeration Used?
Aeration is the best way to raise pH. That raises your pH gradually while not affecting your TA. It is free and requires no chemicals.
Aeration is used during the process to lower TA.
How Long Does Aeration Take to raise pH?
It is very difficult to predict how long aeration will take.
How effective the aeration is depend on both the number of bubbles and their size (you want lots of small bubbles). Both of those are difficult to measure or describe, so it is difficult to compare one situation to another.[1]
The rate of pH rise with aeration also depends on the TA. The higher the TA, the faster the pH will rise.
Extremely effective aeration will take hours, less effective aeration can take days to raise the PH.
What Causes Aeration to Raise pH
Anything that increases the surface area of the air-water interface increases the rate of carbon dioxide leaving the pool water.
Pools are intentionally over-carbonated both to provide a pH buffer and to saturate the water with the carbonate portion of calcium carbonate to protect plaster surfaces from dissolving. In other words, there is a lot more dissolved carbon dioxide in the water than would naturally occur in equilibrium with the air (though obviously not as much as a carbonated beverage!).
As for why the pH rises, the easiest way to explain it is that some of the carbon dioxide in water is carbonic acid -- that is, carbon dioxide plus water makes carbonic acid -- so removing carbon dioxide is like removing carbonic acid. Removing an acid from the water makes the pH rise.[2]
How Can Aeration Be Created?
Make a bubbler for the pool
Use a length of 1/4" soaker hose zip-tied to a seven-foot piece of cement-filled PVC pipe for weight and rigidity. Connect it to a large air compressor, that can be located in the garage, via 100' of air hose. With the pressure regulator set for 30 PSI, you can get a solid curtain of tiny bubbles that is fun to swim through. It raises the pH measurably in just a few hours of use.[3]
Hose in Return Basket
Use the hose that attaches the skimmer basket, hook it to the one water return that a small pool has, and tie it to the ladder with two metal clips to flatten the end. This raised pH from 7.2 to 7.8 in an afternoon.[4]
- ↑ https://www.troublefreepool.com/threads/aeration-to-raise-ph.11853/post-96953
- ↑ https://www.troublefreepool.com/threads/why-does-aeration-cause-an-increase-in-ph.17107/post-141966
- ↑ https://www.troublefreepool.com/threads/aeration-to-raise-ph.11853/post-112020
- ↑ https://www.troublefreepool.com/threads/aeration-to-raise-ph.11853/post-388610
