Quote Originally Posted by waterbear
TA 110 ppm (I have had the spillover and waterfalls running almost constantly last week for the kids and the TA did not move and this is 10 ppm from last weeks test of 120 ppm and that is also the accuracy of the test. As far as I am concerned this is NO CHANGE. I did not bother to repeat this test....close enough for government work, as they say

I have my SWG down to 6% from 15% output in 3 week, normally it's at 10% and maintains about a 4 ppm FC. I raised it to 15% because we got a lot of rain and last week I lowered it back to 10%. Richard, your thoughts on this?
Evan,

WOW! Maybe the borates will cure cancer! Seriously, I'm very impressed with your results. I (as usual) have a few comments -- take them for what they are worth.

Regarding the TA, though the Boric Acid will buffer the pH, I don't see how it affects changes in TA (carbon dioxide outgassing), at least not directly. It is true that increasing your total borates (ppm Boron) to 50 and adding acid to keep your pH the same at, say, 7.5 actually increases your TA by 6.1 (11.7 at pH 7.8) due to additional relatively small amounts of borate ion dissociated from the boric acid. This increase in the TA is not carbonate, however, and I calculate no change in CO2 outgassing. Besides, with your current numbers, your CO2 outgassing rate is down to 4.0 which is very small so I would expect your TA to be relatively stable.

Now for the chlorine usage question. I don't know why the Boric Acid would cut down the chlorine usage. If you can, try to see if this usage is cut down both day and overnight or if it seems to be mostly a reduction (percentage-wise) in daytime usage. I'm trying to figure out if the Boric Acid is helping to protect the chlorine from sunlight or if it is helping to disinfect and/or oxidize so that chlorine doesn't have to. I don't see the mechanisms for Boric Acid in either process, but it would be good to isolate down to one of these. Since most chlorine usage is due to breakdown from sunlight, it is more likely that the Boric Acid is helping there somehow, but I don't know the mechanism and if it helped prevent breakdown in the same way that CYA does (by binding with chlorine), then that would likely also lower chlorine's effectiveness which wouldn't be good. So we really do need to get to the bottom of this.

Richard