Dropping TA, for the workin man or woman....

[steveinaz]

I know what your thinking. "This will take how many days? I have a life ya' know..." I said the same thing. I just recently re-visited my battle of the high TA, and I think I can shed some positive light on the procedure, and show you how to fit it into your schedule.

Here's what I did; I work from 0700-1530, so I'm generally home by 4pm:

1. Open cold beer, change into swim wear.
2. At 4:15'ish I check TA, then pH to see how much acid to add, to bring me to 7.0
3. Add the acid, let pool circulate for 10 minutes
4. Switch on waterfall or other aireating device
5. At around 6:00'ish (5-7 beers later) I check the pH again, usually at this point I can add about 2 cups more acid.
6. Repeat steps 3 and 4
7. Aireate until pH is up to at least 7.1, turn off aeration, cover if want to at this point, or you can continue.
8. Next 7 days, Check TA then repeat 1-7

**You MAY hit a TA "plateau"--I did at 120ppm, it just didn't want to drop below 120 for like a day and a half--keep hitting it, it will respond. If your pool has relentlessly rising pH all the time (like mine), don't be afraid to get a little aggressive with the acid (no pun intended).

This method allowed me to go from 180ppm TA to 90ppm, in 8 days. So generally I spent about 3.5hrs a day, and of course it doesn't require constant monitoring, so you can be listening to music, watching TV, getting other things done. The quick version:

Get pH/TA reading---Acid---Areate---1.5hrs---Get pH reading---Acid---Aerate---> I did 2 "rounds" per evening; about 6 total cups of acid for a 12,000 gallon pool.

Not as bad as it seems, and I'm already reaping the benefits of a far more stable pH.

[CarlD]

But....
What do you do when you run out of beer?

[steveinaz]

1. Cover pool.
2. Sleep.

[dhanger]

I sure hope you don't get point 5 all turned around

Dan

[sturev]

ya Steve, make sure to keep the acid away from the beer on step 5!!! I hope your beer and acid containers don't look anything alike

[CarlD]

Yeah, all that good beer in the pool trying to bring down the pH!

[steveinaz]

I sure hope you don't get point 5 all turned around

Dan

Wait a minute...that might explain my TA plateau on day 5?

[dhanger]

This "rising pH" seems to be a theme lately, there's a couple other threads discussing it. The one with chemgeek and pooldoc discussing higher level chemistry is interesting to me but over my head right now, but it sounded like chemgeek was suggesting that pH looks for it's own plateau based on some other factors, including a TA lower than 80.

This is the first year (in 5) that I've paid close attention to my water balance, and have the same issue of rising pH. Lately I've been adding acid nearly every other day to counter it, but I'm tempted to leave it alone for a few days to see if it does level off. I haven't recorded a level above 7.8 yet, but that's because I haven't allowed it any higher. Steve, sounds like you're saying that the high TA was the problem, and you've stabilized it now with lowering the TA. My TA has been floating around 80-90 since I started checking about 3-4 weeks ago, but the pH still rises relentlessly. I'm really scratching my head at this point.

On a related note, since my pH does rise, and I haven't kept a close eye on it for a long time and it probably got way out of control at times, the pool calculator says that (given higher CH levels in Arizona) the SI rises with it, which probably explains why my pool developed such a thick calcium ring within the first two years. It got so out of control without me realizing it, that by the time I tried to do something with it, it was beyond my puny efforts. I've just let it be for the last couple years, but a few days ago, while in the pool, I noticed that the ring on the tile portion was starting to disintegrate on its own. I tried some pumice on it, and with a little elbow grease the rest of it came off, which didn't work at all in the past. My only thoughts are that keeping the pH in balance better is having an effect on the existing ring. Well, that and having drained and refilled completely last May, which lowered the CH considerably (in fact I had to add calcium to raise it to it's current level of 190). Don't know if I'm interpreting all this correctly.

Dan