my fill water test

Thought this may be of interest. I'm in West Dundee, IL a far northwest suburb of Chicago. We have our own water supply and filtration plant. The village gets water from the Fox river in which the town borders. I have an HTH kit from walmart that I've been using this year. To satisfy my curiosity, I did a test today on the water from our tap and here's the results:

Cal - 80
PH - 7.8
Alk - 360
TC - .5

This may explain the problems I've been having with lowering Alk this year. I didn't test for CYA, I didn't see the need. Only did Total Chlor, since thats all the test provides. I usually figure Free Chlor on my test strips, which is the only thing I use them for anymore. Does anyone else have high alk from fill water, and if so, are there any preventative techniques or tricks to keep the alk from rising everytime i have to add water after a backwash? Thanks

Hi, Gordy,

I remember from an earlier post you had cloudy water and it was quite puzzling. I think you posted Alk of 110 at the time....is this the same pool?

Nevertheless, there is a detailed description of lowering Alkalinity thru aeration in the Alk forum. Should be pretty easy to follow.

yeah it's the same pool. I had a rough opening this year and the cloudiness was due to algae. I was using test strips at the time, before i picked up the HTH kit. Don't think I was getting an accurate reading back then. But then again after two months of adding fill water with this high of Alk, its no surprise to me of my high readings now. My pool was at 320 at one time, but now I have it down to 190. I've been using muriatic acid, and somewhat doing the aeriation. I have my return jet pointed up to ripple the water. I guess what I was wondering was if there was anyone who had a different trick that address the problem at the time of adding fill water. The aeriation process is slow.

What if you were to aerate the water in the hose? Like using an air compressor and a Y fitting. Just a way out there thought, not sure it will do anything to the Alk of the water direct from the hose.

Gordy,

Just turning the eyeballs up will make it slow. Get your pH down to 7.0 and then make a little device to SPRAY your return water up in the air. You need bubbles and lot's of them. You can unscrew the eyeball base on your pool return pipe and find a std 1.5 " female thread inside. For about three bucks, you can screw in a 1.5" 90 and "bring" your return to the surface. Put an end cap on the 1.5" pipe and drill four holes around the perimeter of the cap. That should give you four jets up into the air fifteen feet or so and your aeration will proceed quickly.

Sevver. One downside of using an air compressor, shop type, is the slight amount of oil they put out in the air stream unless you have an oil/sediment trap in the line. You would make out better, and cheaper, spraying the water by some mechanism as suggested by Gordy.
Al

As far as I know there is no easy way to deal with the ALK in the fill water other than lowering the ALK in the pool to the low end of the range so you have some time before the ALK rises high enough that you have to lower it again from refills. Once you get the hang of the procedure it's really pretty easy...and if it's something that you need to do on a regular basis (which it looks like you do) then either investing in a floating fountain that attaches to the return or making one from pvc is a good investment!
Just my 2 cents!

Thanks for the responses. I think I'll get a little creative and see what I can do. Muritaic acid in pools when the pump is off seems to help a little too. It seems to have a greater effect on the alk rather than the Ph. For instance, last week, I put in a gallon of acid. Pooled it in four spots evenly around the pool. The next day I went from 220 to 190 alk, while ph only went from 7.3 to 7.1. I'll give the aeriation a shot and see what happens.