Do I need Balance Pak 300

Do I need this stuff ???? i have an Inground Vinyl Pool thats 32 x 16
3 ft shallow end going to 8 ft deep end

pool store tells me i need it !!!! My ph is 7.4 Cl is 1.5 and 1.5 and my cya is 75

Alk is 120 -130


Is there a Substitute for this ...Thanks Im a New Poster and reading but usually just lurk



Balance Pak 300

Balance Pak 300 boosts Calcium Hardness to help prevent equipment corrosion, etching of plaster and wrinkling of liners.
What it does:

• Helps to prevent damage to your pool equipment, such as pumps and heaters.
• Helps to balance Calcium Hardness.
• Have your water tested by your BioGuard Authorized Dealer to determine your Calcium Hardness Level.

Nonsense.

You have a vinyl pool. You don't need calcium. Biogard comes up with all this bull-oney and mumbo-jumbo to scare you into spending vast amounts of money on their product which you don't need, but they want you to think you MUST have.

Calcium's SOLE function in pool water is to prevent the leeching of calcium carbonate from the walls of concrete, plaster or tiled pools. Since you have a vinyl pool, there's nothing to leech out.

Don't get "Pool-Stored!" Buy ONLY what you need and buy it at fair prices.

For example: Biogard sells another product for raising Total Alkalinity. It's about $12 for a 4 lb bottle. It contains Sodium Bicarbonate--baking soda that goes for $.50/lb in the supermarket. Biogard uses a variant name (I've forgotten it) so it sounds exotic. Trust me: It's sodium bicarb--baking soda at HEAVILY inflated prices.

Your pool store also says a Biogard product to raise pH. It's expensive and has a catchy name like "pH Balance" or something else and is super-expensive as well. It contains Sodium Carbonate (not the same as Sodium BIcarbonate-baking soda). But Sodium Carbonate is also sold at the grocery store as ..... Washing Soda, by good old Arm and Hammer again--but in a yellow box, not an orange one. It's about$.79/lb--far cheaper than Biogard's but chemically identical.

I could go on and on about the ways you get "Pool-Stored" if you don't watch out. The latest fad is phosphate removers. If you are maintaining your pool then there is a 1 in 1000 chance you'll need this product. But if you do, there's 999 that don't. Yet the pool stores would have you think that 9 out of 10 pools need it, rather than 999 out of 1000 NOT needing it.

Further to Carl's excellent post and other threads on this topic - If you have a heater, warranty requirements may state you have to have a certain level of calcium, and that's about the only reason I've seen given for bothering about calcium in a vinyl pool. Though "Liner wrinkling" is an interesting new scare tactic for me.

If you do want to raise caclium you can do it with the granulated chlorine with calcium or find a pool place that sells a big bucket labeled "calcium" and not marketed with a fancy name.

I don't argue with the pool store folks, I just nod my head and say "ok, I've got that at home..."

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Cardynall-Synn

My ph is 7.4 Cl is 1.5 and 1.5 and my cya is 75

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Take the Balance pak back and spend the money on bleach....your chlorine level is way too low for your CYA level, and you're going to soon have green water, if you don't already. with a CYA of 75, your free chlorine should not drop below 5 ever, and you want less than 0.5 CC. If I read your post right, you have 1.5 FC and 1.5 CC.....if that's the case, you definitely need to shock the pool i[ up to around 20 to burn off the CC.

Janet