Ascorbic treatment

[essikr]

I tried the ascorbic treatment and everything looked great . I brought the alkalinity up with soda and the PH up with borax. Looked good for a week and now the stain is back almost as bad as when I started. The water read is
PH 6,9 ,Alk 110,Cal hd 200,copper 5, CYA 120, chl .5. There can't be much of my heat exchanger left ! It looks like the sequa-sol either wasn't enough or didn't work well.Is there a better sequestor to use??With that much copper in the water is there any way to get it out? Will adding sequestor be a rountine ?

Thanks Marie for your help the pool looked really great after the initial treatment. Sure would like to get it like that again and keep it that way.

[szampino]

Regarding your Numbers: PH 6,9 ,Alk 110,Cal hd 200,copper 5, CYA 120, chl .5

I'm not a forum expert but:

Your PH is too low and may be harmful to your pool. Raise it to at least 7.0 to be on the safer' side. 7.0 is also a good number to target for shocking with metals. After you get your metals under control you could maintain it at the 7.2 range.

Your CYA is going to require you to 'Shock' at about FC 25ppm. (this may be a problem with metals and Sequestering, I'm not sure at what point the Sequestering Agents breakdown)

Stabilizer . . . . . . Min. FC . . . . Max FC . . . 'Shock' FC
=> 0 ppm . . . . . . . 1 ppm . . . . . 3 ppm . . . . 10 ppm
=> 10 - 20 ppm . . . . 2 ppm . . . . . 5 ppm . . . . 12 ppm
=> 30 - 50 ppm . . . . 3 ppm . . . . . 6 ppm . . . . 15 ppm
=> 60 - 90 ppm . . . . 5 ppm . . . . . 10 ppm . . .. 20 ppm
=> 100 - 200 ppm . . . 8 ppm . . . . . 15 ppm . . .. 25 ppm

Your cl number doesn't give me enough information. This forum looks at chlorine as FC + CC = TC. FC='Good Chlorine' and CC='Bad Chlorine', TC is just how much Chlorine is at the party.

**I also took a brief look at your other Posts to see how you got to this point but coudn't find any background. So I'm not sure what your water looked like before, and what you did prior to the AA treatment.

[mbar]

szampino is right. You need to keep your chlorine level at a minimum of 8ppms with a cya of 120. You may want to drain some of your water and refill to get your cya at a better level. You can drain down 1/3, add more water and repeat until you get your cya at about 50. Then I would suggest you get your ph to 7.0 - 7.2. Add more sequestering agent. Sequasol is good, Jack's Magic is good, so is Proteams Metal Magic, also Metal Free, Water warehouse metal out are all good, I have used them all. When you get the ph to 7.0, add the sequestering agent - add more than the bottle says - it should lighten the stain without having to do the ascorbic acid treatment again. You probably didin't have enough sequestering agent in the water to keep the metals from falling out. Sometimes it takes a lot of the agent to accomplish this task. If you add the sequestering agent and after a couple of days to a week, the stains are still there, then add a little more ascorbic acid. Just go around the edge of the pool and then let it circulate for a while. It should take the stain right off. You can then start to raise the chlorine back to level you need for your cya. Just make sure there is enough sequestering agent in there before you use the ascorbic acid. I also suggest that you raise the chlorine with bleach, so that you can do it slowly till you get to the chlorine level you need. Feel free to ask any other questions you have.

[essikr]

Thanks to both of you for the prompt reply. I left alot of info out ,sorry.
The pool is 15 years old 16X32 approx.23,000 gal.,still on the original vinyl liner. I started on Bauqasil when it was new and switched to chlorine 7 years later (glad) . Added a heater 3 years ago. I have had very few water problems using the baking soda and borax. I use bleach when I open the pool and a chlorinator with 1" tabs during the season.
When I opened the pool this spring the liner,steps ,etc were stained a brown rust color bad.Brushing did nothing to remove it.After reading your posts and information in the forum (great help). I ground some vit C tablets and tried it, the stain wiped right off. With help from the forum I determined the unbalanced water was eating the heat exchange and putting copper in the pool.I did the AA treatment several weeks ago and wow the pool looked great almost lke new(well almost) .I added the sequestor 2 qts of sequa-sol . Used bleach to bring the level up slow and the soda and borax for the PH and Alk.Everything looked good till this week and I noticed the stain coming back .We did have a family outing last week,lots of kids in the pool.The chlorine level was low so I added bleach to bring it up , I put a gallon in and the reading I took was 5-10 with my kit. It went down 2 days later. I was working on the PH and Alk when the stain started to re-appear. Never liked my hth test kit so I ordered a Taylor K-2006 kit. Using the new kit my numbers are FC 1,TC 1.5,CYA 120,TA 110,CH 210, PH 7.
I think you answered most of my questions and will be following your suggested route. It's not practical for me drain and add I'm on well water.
One thing,how does the CYA raise ? What is the range that is acceptable? Thanks again for all your help ,the forum is a great place to learn. I hope I can contribute with experiences I have had with my pool.

[mbar]

CYA, which is cyanuric acid is also called "stabilizer". It is also in trichlor pucks. That's why trichlor is called "stabilized chlorine". You can have it build up in your water over using the pucks, because the only way to get cya out of the water is to drain and refill. Usually over the winter you lose it due to the dilution of the water with rain and snow. It can also get eaten up by a really bad algae bloom. What is recommended on this forum is to keep your cya between 30 - 50. Chlorine becomes less effective with high cya. Here is a chart we use, called the "best guess chart":

Stabilizer . . . . . . Min. FC . . . . Max FC . . . 'Shock' FC
=> 0 ppm . . . . . . . 1 ppm . . . . . 3 ppm . . . . 10 ppm
=> 10 - 20 ppm . . . . 2 ppm . . . . . 5 ppm . . . . 12 ppm
=> 30 - 50 ppm . . . . 3 ppm . . . . . 6 ppm . . . . 15 ppm
=> 60 - 90 ppm . . . . 5 ppm . . . . . 10 ppm . . .. 20 ppm
=> 100 - 200 ppm . . . 8 ppm . . . . . 15 ppm . . .. 25 ppm

As you can see with a cya of 120, your minimum chlorine level should be at 8ppms. This is the level you need to really have your water sanitized. When you shock you will need to go to 25.

Hope this helps, ask any questions you have.

[waterbear]

A couple of observations:
first copper usually does not react well to ascorbic acid, especially the BROWN copper stains (the blue ones might but the bronw, grey and black usually won't).
second, you said you are on well water. Have you tested it for iron? I suspect that you have iron staining from your well!
I also suspect that the reason your copper levels are so high are linked to your use of trichlor.
first, is your clorinator before of after your heater? It should be after. If it is before it explains the high copper levels.
If it is after it means you have not been keeping tabs on your TA and pH because the only reason so much copper would dissolve is because your water was too acidic. This is fairly common with trichlor use.

Finally, even forgetting that your CYA is way too high YOU NEED TO DRAIN THAT POOL AND REFILL BECAUSE YOU HAVE 5 PPM COPPER IN THE WATER. THAT IS WAY TOO HIGH TO BE SWIMMING IN AND IT IS NOT HEALTHY. COPPER IS TOXIC, THAT IS WHY IT IS USED AS AN AGACIDE AND YOU HAVE ABOUT 16 TIMES THE ALGAESTATIC LEVEL IN YOUR WATER!!!
ANYTHING ABOUT 1 PPM IS TOO HIGH!

sorry for shouting but you really need to pay attention to that.
bite the bullet, drain and refill and treat your well water for the iron that I suspect actually caused your staining.