Bleach same as Chlorine

[halds]

If bleach does not raise your pH, then you must be adding acid from something. Usually trichlor pucks is the answer. Or frequent rains. Or you are losing alkalinity (bicarb) due to a waterfall or aeration.

Hal

[Poolsean]

Carl, Watermom...interesting responses. Can we follow this out to see what may be causing your particular pools to not need alot of acid with the use of bleach? It is fact that bleach is high in pH and typically require the addition of acid when you add bleach.
Do you both have automatic water fill lines? Vinyl liners or gunite pools? Indoor or outdoor pools?
Where do you keep your chemical parameters?

[waterbear]

There have also been some posts of people with SWGs that have constant pH. If my memory serves me correctly they all had vinyl pools. I know Carl has a vinyl pool, don't know about Watermom. I wonder if there is something leaching from the vinyl that is lowering the pH. My fiberglass pool with a SWG needs constand additions of acid to keep the pH down (as is expected)

[CarlD]

I think this is a fascinating discussion, but since it's getting technical, I'm going to move it to the China Shop.

I generally add about a gallon of regular bleach every two days--to 19,200 gallons. We've had a lot of rain lately (unless you are a hermit you know that NJ and NY have been HAMMERED with rain) and that tends to be acid.

OK: so before we get to the esoteric let's look at some obvious factors:
1) Amount of bleach to pool volume. I add 1 gallon to 19,200 every other day...dilution alone explains a lot of it.
2)Powders dissolve rather than dilute--is that a factor?
3) Total Alkalinity---let's remember this is SUPPOSED to keep your pH from moving. Usually, mine is in the safe-for-vinyl/unsafe-for-concrete range 140-160. This year I'm only running 80-90 (too lazy to add baking soda) and the pH has moved more than it does, but not so much that I'm concerned. I don't care if pH moves between 7.3 and 7.6 and down again as long as it's in that range.
4) Acid rain. Doesn't take much to lower pH.

That's all I can think of this morning....

[Sherra]

Just throwing my short lived BBB experience out there. I've not had an issue with high PH in my pool this season (new pool) and I'm strictly on the BBB method. Even when I had the algae issue earlier this season and added 10-15 gallons of bleach over just a few days (I lost count) my PH was always 7.2-7.5.

[Waterworks]

I'll throw in my two cents.
Most of my customers never ever use ph down, whether it be dry acid or muriatic. If they use anything at all to adjust their ph it is ph up (soda ash). Many of my customers use only 12% liquid chlorine, with no pucks, and hardly any use cal hypo. We've always figured that this is because of our city water's ph of 6.6, alkalinity of 30, acid rain and having properly alkalinity balance.
Also, we've sold around 30 SWC's and haven't heard a complaint yet of high ph. These people tend to range from 7.5-7.8, while our normal customers tend to range from 7.2-7.5.

Brad
Waterworks Pools