Caltreat for lowering calcium hardness in pools

Answers to your questions.

1. I would raise the CYA up to 40-50. You may find it at Walmart or may have to get it from a pool store. It may be labeled as conditioner or stabilizer. Check the ingredients. You want to see cyanuric or isocyanuric acid and not a bunch of other ingredients. You'll want to add about 3.5 lbs. Put it in an old sock and hang it in front of a return jet. Give the sock a squeeze every now and then to help it dissolve faster. Don't retest the CYA for a week after you add it so you won't waste your reagents.

2. Test your water every evening --- chlorine and pH. (Other tests don't need to be done daily.) Each time you test, add enough bleach to take your chlorine level back up to about 6ppm. If you find that by the next evening when you test again, that you have dropped below 3ppm, take it up to 7 instead of 6. You don't want the chlorine level to ever go below 3ppm. In your pool, each 3 quart jug of bleach will add 2ppm of chlorine. use that as a reference to help you figure out doses of bleach to add each evening.

3. You don't need to raise your pH or alk. Your alk is ok where it is. Your pH is too high. You want pH to be 7.4-7.6 although anywhere 7.2-7.8 is ok. You use muriatic acid to lower it. Please read the link in Ben's signature above about how to use muriatic acid safely.

4. You can either use Picasa, Flicker, Photobucket or the like to add a picture or email them to poolforum@gmail.com and reference the URL of this thread.

Hope this helps. Glad your pool looks better!

Hello;

I have actually just used CALTREAT.

My results were no change.
I have a plaster salt pool.
My data:
FC=3.5
CC=.5
TC=5
Ph=8.2
Alk=60
Cal=700
Cya=80

Initially my Cal was 980 but I did a 25% (approx) drain which dropped it to 700.

I was hoping the caltreat would further reduce it but no luck.
To supplement the generator I use ChlorBrite.

Other than draining some more is there anything else I can do?

Thanks

Draining and refilling may -- or may not -- help. You need to test your FILL water, to find out. Some water systems supply water that is quite high in calcium.

I'm not sure what's in Caltreat and I've never trusted United Chemical's products enough to test them on my customer's pools. The reports I've seen on results have been very spotty, ranging from "made things worse" to "worked, but took much more product than the literature suggested".

Lime softening -- explained here [ http://www.poolforum.com/pf2/showthread.php?16992 ] -- does work, but requires careful attention to detail. If you are willing to follow the process, it's fully explained in that thread. Just be aware it will take awhile to clean all the particles out of the pool and water.

If your filter is in poor condition, I would repairing it, first.