The Great Tetraborate Experiment!

[mas985]

Hi ,
Today I started my quest to get my borates up to 50 ppm. I went to home depot to get some muriatic acid. The first thing I noticed is that it looks like water. I haven't purchased acid since last season. The acid I had from before was yellow in color. I looked at the ingredients and it has 14.5% acid. Unfortunatly I didn't have any left over acid jugs from last season to see if they lowered the percentage of acid. I know the acid I had before would almost knock you out if you caught a smell of it. This stuff doesn't do a thing. Has anyone else noticed any difference? I am in California Modesto area.
Chem Geek when you calcualted the amount of acid per box of borax what percentage was it for? Maybe this is the reason why I am having to add so much acid to my pool to get a change. If in fact the percentage has changed. Well off to add some borax and acid to the pool. cya

I had the same problem. Lowe's still has the strong stuff but who knows for how long. The thing that burned me about HD was the price was the same as before but half the strength. Lowe's has the same price but 29%.

[cgc2]

$221.00 for the Boron Test Kit from Taylor KIT NUMBER: K-1541
Kinda pricey....looks like strips for me as I convert my pool

[ccr-n-ia]

An additional benefit to adding the borax is that it wiped out all of the water bugs in my pool.

[waterbear]

$221.00 for the Boron Test Kit from Taylor KIT NUMBER: K-1541
Kinda pricey....looks like strips for me as I convert my pool

NOT the test kit you want. It will only test up to 15 ppm boron.
Proteam has a similar titration test kit that is designed to test Supreme (their brand of borax for pools) that is about $70. Any pool store that is a Proteam dealer should be able to order it. I have not been able to find it online. I have ordered one from our Proteam ditributor at work (it's backordered until July 19) so when it comes in I will post how it works. I have also talked to tech support at LaMotte and they told me that their borate test strips have a better color differentiation than the AquaChek. I have not been able to find the LaMotte test strips anywhere yet since they are a relatively new product but I am trying to find them so I can check them out. Perhaps if enough people contact LaMotte about the unavailability of the strips they might get them more widely distributed.

The Proteam test strips are rebranded AquaCheks. I do not know what the Bioguard ones are but I suspect they are the same since both strips are used in the repective companies strip readers for their in store water testing and all the strip readers I am familiar with use AquaChek strips.

[leejp]

Here in the Northeast we always have to raise the ph because the rain is so acidic. Would I get the same benefits simply using Borax to raise the ph after each rainstorm over time?