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Thread: PH low after adding my cya- how to adjust?

  1. #1
    Join Date
    Jul 2006
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    Red face PH low after adding my cya- how to adjust?

    Did my conversion in less than 2 days and my pool is beautiful; however, this morning my ph was down to 6.8 after adding 4 lbs. of CYA in the skimmer. The bleach calc says to add soda ash to raise it and other threads say to use borax. I am totally confused as to what to add. What is soda ash and where do you get that? Also , is this normal that the cya lowers the ph?
    My pool is an IG 18000 vinyl liner. Had to use test strips and they are hard to read, but I haven't gotten the kit I ordered from Ben yet ( which was only 4 days ago). Should I get a drop based from Wal-Mart in the mean time or can I continue with the strips and guess at their accuracy?

    CH 1
    Ph 6.8 (yesterday 7.6)
    AlK 100
    CYA - don't know yet

    Help! Linda

    P.S. I used a kitty litter scoop to clean a lot of the gunk out of my sand filter until I can change the sand. It worked really well because the globs stay in the scoop and the sand just falls through when the filter is not drained of water. (Sorry if this tip is in the wrong thread-I am a newbie)
    Last edited by LindaE; 07-28-2006 at 08:44 AM.

  2. #2
    PatL34 is offline Lifetime Member Widget Weaver PatL34 2 stars PatL34 2 stars
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    Default Re: PH low after adding my cya- how to adjust?

    Add the Borax. It does a much better job than soda ash. Soda ash is sodium carbonate. CYA is cyanuric acid and will lower pH, but not as much as muriatic acid.

    Yes, get the drop-based test kit from Walmart, or the Taylor K-2006 kit from the pool store. Ben's PS234 testkit will do everything you need for testing. We here find test strips to be very unreliable, and some of only use them to get ballpark figures.

    Hope this helps.

    Pat
    20,000 Gallon IG Diamond Brite pool, 1.5 HP Sta-Rite pump, Hayward Microclear DE3600 filter, Favco solar panels, Poolpilot DIG-220 with SC-48 cell.

    + SWCG OPERATION thread here: http://www.poolforum.com/pf2/showthread.php?t=1226
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  3. #3
    Join Date
    Jul 2006
    Posts
    8

    Default Re: PH low after adding my cya- how to adjust?

    Thanks Pat- So how much Borax do you add if you can't use the bleach calc to figure it out? 18000 gal to raise .4 to .6?

  4. #4
    duraleigh Guest

    Default Re: PH low after adding my cya- how to adjust?

    Hi, Linda,

    Borax comes in the same size box country wide. So, a good start would be to add 1/2 of the box, wait around 24 hours and retest. Re-add based on your test results.

    The Wal-mart kit ($15) is a good stop-gap kit...much better than the strips. The Taylor kit is a good kit but way too much money ($60 or more, I think) if you've ordered Ben's. His will be worth the wait.

    CYA would not have lowered your pH that much. I suspect it's the inaccuracy of the strips.

    The kitty liter scoop is a nice tip,,,,makes sense.

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