High PH - Feeling stupid

[Pamsel]

I'd like to add a question to this thread. I also have very high PH and over the last 30 hours have put in a total of 1 gal muriatic acid. I have a 14,500 gal pool. So far, the PH has not come down and my TA is also very high -320

I think I should have dumped in a half gallon of acid to start with, but now that I've put a gallon in since noon yesterday, do I wait or should I still go dump another 1/2 gallon in?

I'm maintaining my chlorine at about 10-12ppm - I need a kit that is accurate over 5ppm. Can someone tell me exactly which of Ben's kits to buy? It looks to me on the site that the main one is no longer available?

Thanks!

[mbar]

I asked Waterbear to look at this post about the rising ph and alkalinity, since he is great with pool chemistry :


Marie, I went through the thread , posted, and hopefully explained a few things that are going on. The big red flag for me was '3 month algaecide'. All the ones that I have seen like this are copper! Might explain part of the green water, not to mention the iron! This is YOUR area of expertese so the ball is in your court!

As far as the alk and pH...2 possible reasons.
1. It can take a LOT of acid to overcome the high ALK, which is a buffer that keeps the pH from changing, before you start to see the pH move at all.
2 High chlorine levels will interfere with both ALK and pH tests. pH tests will read 8.2 even thoough the pH is much lower because the phenol red has been converted to chlorophenol red which is used to test the pH range of 4.6 to 6.8 and gives the same color at 6.8 that phenol red gives at 8.2! All you really know is that the pH is somehwhere above 6.6![/QUOTE]

[aylad]

Pamsel,
It would keep things a lot less confusing for the responders if you would start your own thread instead of adding a question to an existing thread....you're way more likely to get good answers, and the responders are less likely to get your situation confused with the original poster's problems..

To answer your question, you need to keep adding the acid until your pH starts to move, because it has to come down for your alk to be lowered.

And to measure Cl higher than 5, you can use CarlD's dilution method for a ballpark Cl reading with the test kit you have, or you can get exact measurements up to 50 ppm from the dpd/fas chlorine testing in the PS 234.

Thanks

Janet

[Pamsel]

Thank you Janet, I will stick to my own thread. I guess I was reading and saw this thread which seemed similar to my problem and jumped in. I will remember not to "cross over" from now on.

Thank you Marie, also for your help here. Now, I'll get back to where I belong!