Absentee pool owner

[waterbear]

Is my math correct in that I will need almost 47 pounds of 20 mule team borax to get my 12500 gallons up to your recommended 50 ppm. 60 Oz's by weight per 1000 gal X 12.5 gal = 750 Oz's. divided that by 16 Oz's per pound is 46.87 pounds??
Yes, It comes in 76 oz boxes (4.75 lb.) and costs about $3 a box at grocery stores, walmart, target, etc. You will need a bit less than 10 boxes for the initial dosing.

This is the box you are looking for at the store.

You will also need about three gallons of 20 baum (31%) muriatic acid, which is usually abut $5 a gallon or less.
You should also pick up a tube of LaMotte Borate test strips for about $10. They are far superior to any other borate strips I have used, MUCH easier than the expen$ive Proteam Borate drop test kit, and are precise enough to keep you in the 30-50 ppm 'sweet spot' for borates in a chlorine pool.
When the borate levels drop to 30 ppm bump them back up to 50 ppm with borax and acid. I need to do this about every 1.5 years in my pool so far.

I hope this stuff is cheap.
It is.

I need a little more help in understanding what amount of CYA I need to have in my pool. From reading threads in this forum it seems like the more CYA you have the higher amount of free chlorine you need to have also.
While that is true the amount of chlorine actually consumed tends to stay the same or actually go down a bit. In very hot, sunny climates CYA as high as 80 ppm is not necessarily a bad thing, as long as adjustments to the chlorine levels are made to compensate. Also, there is some limited evidence that CYA levels above about 70 ppm actually have a secondary shielding effect against UV that cannot be explained by the chemistry alone and might be an actual 'sunscreen" effect that increases with depth. Chemgeek can explain more about this than I can.

Consider that pool services that use gas chlorination in plaster pools routinely use CYA levels of around 150 ppm to maintain a workable FC level for a week between chlorinations and that this method is very successful at maintaining a clear pool.


Do I need to add any poly quate 60 algaecide?
Not with the borates, It wouldn't hurt but is an unneeded expense, IMHO. Also if you are going to shock be aware that polyquat does have an effect on chlorine levels. IF, after adding borates, you still have a problem with algae then a weekly dose of polyquat would be a second level of "insurance" but I do not think you will need it.

When I return the future times I will shock in the evening when the suns low in the sky. Does the shock need to get the water back up to the 25-30 ppm level again each time I do that?
I purchased 4 lbs of CYA at my local pool store 2 weeks ago but have not used any so far. My 32ppm CYA has come from using Trichlor for six weeks.
With a CYA of 30 ppm (I know of no way you could get 32 ppm reading from a
Taylor kit, it does not have that kind of precision!) you only need to shock to about 15 ppm. This chart should be helpful to you in where to maintain your chlorine and where to shock. Too high a chlorine level in a vinyl pool could cause bleaching of your liner!

Hope this is helpful.

[Heavyhook]

Thanks Waterbear,
The borax is cheap at $3.00 a box. So the initial cost of adding that is very reasonable. I remember passing the 20 mule team mine in the southern California desert some 30 to 40 years ago as a child.
I actually have about 5 gallons of Muriatic Acid I recently purchased from Lowe's in there pool supply dept. But I don't recall off hand the % of acid it is. The water supply I have is very alkaline. Is the "Baum 20" a specific brand name?
To get the 32ppm CYA, I used the 9ML side in the comparator that is part of the Taylor k-2005c test kit. Filling the tube untill the black dot on the bottom disappeared. There are lines on the outside that indicate 10,20,ect. the amount of CYA ppm. As I recall its about 1/4" between each graduation. My test showed I had filled just above the 30ppm mark. Hence best guess a result 32 ppm?
Taken in account my location and strong sunlight during the majority of the pool season would it be advisable to bump my CYA up to 50 ppm? It seems like what I am hearing is the actual amount may be some what subjective. I just do not want to make the mistake of raising it to high when I just drained and refilled my pool 6 weeks ago. I still have about 25lbs of Tricor 3" pucks I would like to use up if raising my CYA is advisable! Thanks again and I have already ordered the LaMotte Borate test strips you recommended so they will be on hand when I go to add the Borax.