Fixing alkalinity with the BBB method in Texas

Hi Ben,

My name is Ross Moore and I happened upon your web site and decided to give your pool chemistry a go.

I am a amateur with the pool so I Need a lot of help. My pool is fiberglass 10,000-11,000 gallons w/ spa jets. Location is in South Texas 50 Miles south of San Antonio rural location. Bought this place last year and just kind of winged it. This year I want to do it your way.

2 weeks ago i started using a HTH - 6 way test

Chlorine was 1.0
PH - Way off the scale High
Alkalinity- 480
Hardness- 440
CYA- 130

I started with your Alkaline theory - muriatic acid and jetting for the last two weeks - took 2 gallons of M/acid just to get the PH below 8.2 on my scale. Since then I keep seeing the Alkalinity & Hardness coming down but I keep adding 2-4 cups of MA a day to keep the PH down at around 7.2. It just keeps climbing and I'm up to 4 gallons of MA to date.


Current Test 4/4/11
CH - 3
PH-7.2-7.5
Hardness - 120
Alkalinity- 180

It's getting there but the amount of MA is scaring me!! Is this a normal amount to use for this application?

Fill water is AL-440 Hardness-420 PH- 8.2 or higher. Because of my High Alkalinity I'm shooting for 100, since during the summer its not unusual to add water 2-3 times a week.

Would also like to purchase one of your Testing Kits but a little leery being the last posted date on Poolsolutions was 2006.

No problem with paying $$ for your services.

P.S. The pool water looks 200 % better since I started; now it's bright sparkling and starting to getting a darker blue each day.


Ross Moore

Hi Ross;

Your results are typical and normal. My PS234 kit is defunct, but the HTH kit is fine for what you are doing, right now.

Those are some difficult fill water conditions. Keeping your alkalinity at or below 100 is probably a good idea, with a fiberglass pool.

Muriatic acid is going to be a part of your life, so make sure you are handling and storing it safely. MA fumes DESTROY wiring and steel. Make sure -- really, really sure -- that if you are storing MA indoors, there is ZERO release of fumes indoors.

If you'd like to pay (and get a little better access), please subscribe . . . though that may be a little difficult till I get the server upgrade complete.

Ben / PoolDoc

Hi Ross! Glad to have you here. Hope you'll find the site so helpful that you'll decide to become a subscriber. Let us know if we can help any further with your pool.

Hi PoolDoc,

The Battle is getting better,

4-6-11
TA - 120
Hardness - 120
Chlorine - .5-5.0
CYA - 120-130

Last night I add 4-cups of clorine and this morning was @ 5.0 or better @ 2:00 pm it's at .5-1.0, is this due to my High CYA, per HTH instructions they recommend 20-50 ppm and say the only way to lower is to partial drain. Your recommendations as since I'm just now getting my TA, PH in line, I really don't want to drain and put more of my bad fill water in again.

P.S. I rechecked my fill water again just to be sure and the numbers where the same. thanks

You don't need to drain; you just need to adjust your chlorine levels to compensate. Use this chart as a guide:

Ben's Best Guess Chlorine Chart

But, you will need a DPD-FAS chlorine test kit (drops based DPD test) in order to stay on top of things. As far as I know, you can either order a Taylor K-2006 (what my kit was based on) or the TFP approximate copy of my PS234 (defunct) kit.

Ben / PoolDoc

Ordered a K-2006 yesterday, via your link.

On 4-6, I added 2 lbs of Borax, later that evening the ph was 7.5 so I added 2 cups of MA and 3 cups of clorine. Since then everything has stablized. no more chemicals, YEA!!!

PH - 7.2
TA - 100
CH - 100
Chlorine - 5.0 + Won't get my new kit until mid April, so will try to maintain between 3.0-5.0.

P.S. I'm a industrial mechanic by trade and another good use for Borax is as a hand cleaner. Take a dap of any reagular dishwashing detergent and barely a few sprinkles of boarx (very very little) and it will work better than GO-JOE. I carry a water bottle of it in truck and my wife keeps a bottle of it in the shower for me on those really nasty days.

It also works great in the laundry (it's intended purpose) on my nasty clothes, though me wife does wash them a second time with just water to get all the soap out.

If you maintain chlorine at 3-5 ppm with a CYA of 120-130, you're going to end up with a pool full of algae. For a CYA that high, you need to target 8-15 ppm, and never go lower than 8!! In fact, the closer you can keep it to the 15 end of the range, the better.

Janet

Since you'll need to run higher chlorine levels than your test kit can test to compensate for your high cya, the method described at the following link will be helpful to you. It is not recommended as a permanent testing method, but only a temporary way until you can get the better kit.

http://www.poolforum.com/pf2/showthr...5545#post65545

Borax is also used as a flux in soldering and brazing- while we're sharing multi uses for items!
cleans copper up, then allows the soder to "flow" properly...

Thanks watermom, I'll give it a shot.