PS234 - My 1st set of results

[kearpaul]

Greetings, My 1st thread here!

FC: 1.5
CC: .5
TC: 2
pH: 7.5
Alk: 160
Cal: 160
Cya: under 20
Temp: 83 F

It's a plaster pool, less than 6mos. old. Right now the water is clear. Our biggest problem has been metals -- our well water is high in manganese. We have to stay on top of it with metal magnet. Chlorine is trichlor pucks in a floater.

I feel like I know just enough to be dangerous. Any advice appreciated!

Cheers from the Sierra Foothills,
Paul

[aylad]

Hi,
I'm not sure exactly what advice you're looking for, but I have a couple of comments on your numbers.. for a plaster pool, I believe you need to get your calcium into the 200-400 range to keep the water from leaching it out of your plaster. In addition, your alk is a little high and might cause some precipitation problems. There are directions in a sticky at the top of the Calcium and Alkalinity forum for lowering your alk, which should go to the 80-120 range.

Also, if you're planning to continue using trichlor, keep an eye on your stabilizer, which tends to creep up, and your pH, which will tend to creep down (although that may be a good thing for you as your plaster cures--just make sure they don't get too high/low).

I would also advise you to read through the metals forum on how to handle metals in the water--it's out of my range of advice, but read through anything you can see posted by mbar (Marie), who has extensive experience in metals.

Welcome to the forum, and congrats on the new pool!!

Janet

[kearpaul]

Hey Janet,

Your comments are appreciated. Just wanted to see if any

alarm bells

went off when folks looked at the numbers.

I read the Sticky. It deals with lowering alk, but not raising calcium. Can you do both at once? And how does one raise calcium?

(Hope it's cooler in NW LA than in NoCal. We keep bouncing around 100F. At least it's a dry heat!)

Cheers,
Paul

[Watermom]

To raise calcium, you can either add calcium chloride or just use cal-hypo as your chlorine source until you get the calcium level where you want it.