TA Issues; First-Year Pool Owner

[Snowymoon]

I was hoping to reading something of that sort. Actually, the high TA does not seem to do much as long as the pH is kept around 7.

My Intex does have a surface skimmer basket, but I won't pour CYA into that. I did once, and it worked, but I could not clean the screen or hose off the filter cartridge for days (in this filter, that must be done daily or pool gets gunked). This caused my pool to gunk up quick with debris. I would rather do the panty-hose thing. It was also suggested that I go full BBB for now and just use up the CYA-containing stuff next spring to help add CYA to the pool and then go back to BBB and stay there once that stuff is gone.

I did something pretty smart (I think) today. I removed the hose for the skimmer basket from the intake and capped it, so it will just pull water into the filter system through the cap thingie in the water. I then took the hose and attached it to the return, moved the ladder over there and tied the end of the hose to the ladder with one of hubby's longer tube socks. Wah-lah! Aerator foutain! It is working really well. ::dances around:::

TA is holding at 270. I guess mostly I am learning for next year. I have no idea what my starting TA was, but both the TA and pH were off the test strips and very high. I had added some pH Minus and 2 gallons of muriatic acid (MA) diluted in water, walked around the perimeter and dumped in the pool rather than dumping in spots, over a course of 3 days. This caused the pH to drop well enough and the TA came down a bit (down to about 6.8 or so), but the pH never raised up. I freaked out about it (afraid of liner damage) and added pH up. That led to TA going right back up and some water cloudiness. I think the water cloudiness was due to not enough chlorination due to increasing CYA levels, though.

Pool is clearing nicely now. Shocked up to 20 ppm with plain ultra bleach last night, and it is aearating as I type this.

ETA: If you would like me to post a picture of it, I will.