Brand New Fill Water - pH issue

I had a new liner put in a couple of weeks ago and not too long after I got the pool filled I covered it for the season. I have been adjusting the water balance for a little over a week now (I crawl under the solid cover to add chems to skimmer but take water sample in deep end), and have been running my pump 24/7 to make sure the CYA gets dissolved. Here are my numbers:

CYA 45
FC 2
TA 140
pH light orange!
20,000 gal. in ground
New 3/4 hp Hayward Superpump
New multiport
Same old Sta-Rght sand filter

I can't give you my pH because the light orange color doesn't match any color on the color comparator gizmo (OTO). Originally when the pool was filled the color was light pink (same as when I tested my tap water while the liner was being installed), so I thought it wouldn't take much Borax to darken the color up and get it to the 7.2-7.5 range.

I have now added two 4-lb. boxes of Mule Team Borax I bought at the grocery store. But the pH color has gone south -- from light pink to now light orange.

I just took a look at the pool calculator at TFP. For the heck of it I "guessed" and put in a current pH of 6.5 with a goal of 7.5. The calculator told me I need 218 oz. by weight of soda ash. If I take 218 oz. and divided it by 64 oz. which would be what the 4 lb. box of Borax is, I get 3.40. So, then I should add 3.4 boxes of the 4-lb. Borax boxes?

I don't think my grocery store has that many left. I may need to stop at the pool store. I would just buy pH up? But, the real question is, does anyone know what a light orange pH reading would approximate in a number measurement? I don't understand why it went from the original pink after I filled the pool to now light orange. I'm concerned about my pH not being stable. I never had a problem with low pH with my old pool water so this is all new to me. Thanks for any help you can provide.

Did you, by any chance, recently replace your pH reagent and possibly get the wrong replacement? Is it possible that you were using one of the other reagents instead of the one for pH? It would be really odd to me to start out in the "pink", add Borax, and have the pH go down.......did you check and make sure that you're adding the Borax in the green box and not the borax washing powder? (I'm not trying to insult your intelligence, but yours is a really odd situation). I'm guessing that the orange color is going to be in the low 6 range, and I really don't want you to have liner problems with a brand new one.

I guess it's possible that some byproduct form the new liner may be lowering the pH a little bit, but that's really a WAG....hopefully one of the others more expert in liners will pop in and give an opinion.

Janet

Good strategic thinking, Janet! Yes, I am anxious to get the pH correct since it's a brand-new spanking liner!

Interestingly, I did open a brand new OTO kit that I bought two or so months ago, throwing the little amount left of reagent I'd been using since I opened in early May away (darn--I could've cross-checked). The two kits are identical as to manufacturer, both bought at Walmart. I am leaving work early today (in 3 hours) to take a couple hours of remaining vacation, and on my way to SAMS I'll be going by pool store (which is quite a distance from my house) so I will stop and pick up new pH OTO. It's worth the 5 or 6 bucks to see if there's a difference before I start adding more Borax. That said, in the past I have found that kits made from different manufacturers give totally disparate results, and I try to stick with the ones that Walmart sells -- so perhaps I shall go there instead. It was the kind Home Depot sells that gave me an incorrect reading once. Then again, maybe it was simply on the shelf too long; one must be careful I suppose to draw conclusions too fast.

I'm pretty sure the Borax box was green -- I did a little research on the forum before buying and remembered to look for green box. It showed myraid uses, from cleaning the toilet to laundry booster. Are these the kind of uses the correct, green box describes? Does this sound right? I will check back in tomorrow and let you know what the new pH kit says...

Yes, if it's the green box, then it's the right stuff. The only other time that I have seen someone's pH result go from pink to yellow-orange was when he replaced his OTO reagent with R-0004 instead of R-0014 (or vice-versa, I have to check my kit to see which one belongs there). The bottles and reagents look the same, but they give quite different results. I'm wondering if you didn't have a bad batch of reagent. (Or the wrong one packaged with the wrong kit).

Please let me know what the new kit says when you get it--I'm really curious!

Janet

Well, bought a new pH kit at Walmart - unfortunately they didn't have any of the reagent packages only which cost just two bucks, but that's okay as it was very important to know for absolutely sure that my testing agents were sound; and picked up 3 boxes of Borax (green on yellow box). The color for the pH still came up light orange -- go figure! And yes, R-004. I keep my pH kit separate, actually, I keep it in a fanny pack with my chlorine reagents and CYA which is all I usually test for. A couple of times a season I pull Ben's old huge kit out and test for TA (even though I know the reagents are old-old-old - but they still seem to work).

Getting weary of crawling under the cover to skimmer or at deep end to take samples (though I suppose I could also take from skimmer or even pump basket), I put all three boxes of Borax in and then rechecked pH later and boy did it pink up! But I waited this morning to recheck again because of course all the water doesn't circulate in just a few hours. It was still dark pink though this morning so I added several cups of muriatic acid (my haste last night came back to bite me anyway.)

I expect tonight to have my pH more or less about perfect, i.e., within range, or at least very close. I take it low pH is terrible on a liner, and if one wants to safety err, one should err on the high side?

I look forward hopefully tonight to turning the pump off and resume saving $$$ on electricity, and take a rest from it. Although 8 months is far, far too long. But in the south and with all my trees there's no opening until after the spring mess, which is the 2nd week of May.

Janet, as always, thanks for your thoughts and help. Never having used Borax I was a little nervous and really appreciate your support!

Actually, I'm not sure if it's R-004 or R-0014 either -- I never look because the pH kit is in its own little box. I only know now that pink is a beautiful color!

By the way, when I was referring to my new liner, I should've said brand spanking-new not brand-new spanking which takes on a whole other meaning, or at least connotation, lol.

OK, get a small set of simple test strips and use them to cross-check your OTO reading.

You could also get a DPD test kit and try that.

I'm wondering if there's something else in the water that has caused this...there's something in my memory about a particular metal or salt that alters the color scheme of the pH reading....and it's just there at the edge of my memory....

DPD to check pH?

I used both the old and the new OTO kits and they matched...

It also seems that I cannot keep chlorine in the pool, but I've never run the pool with such low chlorine before (I really don't want to bleach out this new liner). I did just peruse Pamsel's post re: her experience with a new liner and keeping chlorine as well. However my TA is around 140; CYA 50 now.

Last weekend I swapped out a cheap new solid winter cover that within hours of putting on began tearing apart at a seam (lesson learned -- never buy a cheap $50 cover, they're not worth it). I bought a high-quality (expensive) cover from my liner guy and it's much heavier and doesn’t even have seams like that cheap one. But, this is all to say that my cover has been in place and when I viewed the water last weekend while taking the one cover off and putting the other one on with the help of my neighbor, it looked as clear as could be - in fact it could not have looked any clearer. So I find it really hard to believe there may be algae. Water temp I'd guess is around 78.

With the old liner that I didn't much care about because it was entirely bleached out, I would shock to 15 before I put the winter cover on, and over the course of 8 months the ppm would only drop about 11 ppm (to 4 ppm when I uncovered in May). I'm in the south so I don't close my pool and the water does not freeze. I just run the pump on the handful of nights that it drops below freezing to safeguard the above-ground pump pipes.

With the awareness that a high ppm of FC would be sitting in that new liner month after month, I did not dare shock the new water. Each day it seems I put in enough bleach to bring the ppm up to 3 and a day later, it's gone. My liner guy said I don't need chlorine with the cover on, but it makes me unsettled. Can it be anything other than algae? I just can't bring myself to shock it now with the cover on because I don't want the high ppm in there for months on end. Any ideas? Or should I just not worry about it with the water cooling, winter on the way, and the winter cover on?

Well, over the weekend the saga of not keeping chlorine continued. So I decided to bring it up to 4 or 5 ppm, let circulate a day, then test for CC as a way to determine if I had algae or not which would account for the chlorine loss, assuming that if I had appreciable algae which was eating up my chlorine with the winter cover on, it would test postive for CC.

When I stopped at the grocery store to get more bleach, a thought occurred to me: I wondered if my other bleach was simply old, so instead of buying the Publix store brand, I bought a big jug of expensive Chlorox, 6% ($5 bucks). Last night I tested and the water was at 4.5 ppm and no CC. I've got the pump turned off now and will recheck this weekend, but I suspect that the reason behind not keeping chlorine is likely because my bleach was old and ineffective.

I don't know how I missed this thread...but I had a dozen 8 year olds for a slumber party last Friday through Saturday, and then my weekend really got busy....

I'm glad that you got the pH question straightened out and you're right that if you're going to err with pH, then do it on the high side.

Keep in mind also that you don't necessarily have CC when you have algae, especially if it's algae that's not yet visible to the eye. When you added the older bleach, did you test to see that it went up to 3 ppm, or did you just add enough that you knew it would be at 3?

One thing you might want to consider, especially since you're in a part of the country where you don't drain your equipment, is uncovering your pool and shocking it, if you still think possible algae is the problem. The other thing you might consider, if you don't want to shock the pool with the cover on, is to use polyquat, followed by a lower chlorine level when you get ready to close it up. Just a couple of suggestions..........

Janet

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by CarlD

I'm wondering if there's something else in the water that has caused this...there's something in my memory about a particular metal or salt that alters the color scheme of the pH reading....and it's just there at the edge of my memory....

---

According to the Taylor instructions "interference" for the pH test here:

Iron > 10 ppm may cause negative interference.

So that CC theory of mine doesn't hold water, rats. But this is the thing: the new water was added to the pool in the new, clean/pristine liner, and within 36 hours the pump was running. I chlorinated, but only to 2 ppm. Within two days I covered the pool. The water temp was probably in the high 70's. It just seems very unlikely to me that algae would develop in these conditions. Plus, when I took the one cover off and put the better cover on, the water was clear-clear-clear. It just doesn't seem that the chlorine would be eaten up so fast assuming algae because it would have to be so very low, if it was. Yes, I did test each time, never guessed the ppm.

It would be a good idea to remove cover, shock, let CL drop and recover, but boy, it's a lot of work to remove such a big cover (I have to enlist help of neighbor and though we're both strong, we usually screw up by the time we accordian the thing to the end), and then keeping it free of grass debris and leaves at this point, plus the leaves are starting to come down and with any wind at all I'll just be a slave to the water. And I'm just done (psychologically) for the season. I'm still betting (hoping?) that it was a case of old bleach. I'll run pump tonight and before turning in take another sample and report back tomorrow.

The pH in the meantime, IS holding within range. :)

Glad the pH situation is fixed....as for the chlorine, if you're finished swimming for the season, just polyquat it, cover it up and leave it alone--you can deal with whatever is under it when it's time to uncover in the spring!

Janet

Yes, so true, that's the option to fall back on. This said, I did check it last night and the ppm's holding at 4.5. I'll check again soon, and expect it to be the same. I *really* do think this was a case of old chlorine now. As always, thanks Janet for your advice. I'll wrap this up with one more post next Monday and hopefully will report 4.5 once again. And now, "sleep, pool, sleep...and sweet dreams along the way."