Will TSP to lower calcium hardness???

[amanda_easternon]

Thanks for the info, I do have a good test kit somewhere but we moved in the fall and I'm still trying to find it.

Do you know anything about something called Hydroquest?

Amanda

[cygnusecks]

For the record, when our pool was done, while I was waiting for Ben's kit, I used a Walmart kit. It was broken somehow and my CH always read 0. So I thought I had no calcium, and kept dumping in calcium. Now that I have Ben's kit, I test around 500ppm calcium (CH) but my pool is crystal clear thanks to the other numbers being nearly perfect (again, thanks to Ben's kit). So it IS possible to have clear water with high CH. I'll probably get some scale somewhere in the future but I'm slowly letting the CH come back down through splashout.

Question for all: Does evaporation (and requisite refilling) lower CH? It would seem that it would not lower it, since the CH would not evaporate with the water.

[CarlD]

Re-test and be sure your pool has CC=0.

I don't trust those numbers. I want to see if your cloud is from algae or a high calcium condition.

The chlorine levels seem fishy, as does the total alkalinity.

Is the cloudiness white or some other color, like green, brown or gray?

[amanda_easternon]

I don't really see any color to it. The water looks blue from the liner but I can't see the bottom so I know the water is not nice and clear.

What is CC? (Sorry, I'm not used to all the abreviations for pool stuff.)

Beside the alkalinity it say's "w/stabilizer correction". Does that make any difference?

Amanda

[waterbear]

There are calcium reducers that are sequesterants but have more of an affinity for calcium than other metals. They are based on derivatives of phosphonic acid (as are most of the metal sequesterants) TSP will raise your phosphate levels very high and can provide a lot of algae food. The phosphonic acid derivatives don't seem to do that as much but they can still raise the phosphate levels from what I understand.

[Ozzzz]

waterbear,

Can you provide some product names for those calcium reducing products ? My fill water has about 350-400ppm calcium. This is the 3rd year for the water and with all the evaporation we experience in the Vegas area the CH is over 1000ppm. I am thinking about emptying the pool at the end of this season but if I can reduce calcium before that I might be able to alleviate some of the scaling before then.

[waterbear]

check with your pool store or online seach for calcium hardness reducer. You want a product that is a derivative of phosphonic acid. Many metal sequesterants will also reduce calcium. Read the bottles and see. If you can read the MSDS. That will usualy list phosphonic acid as a component.