My Swimming pool's Total Alkalinity

[tillyfromparadise Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close tillyfromparadise]

Hi everyone,
A while back there was some discussion in another thread about the total alkalinity of my swimming pool's water.
In the last 15 years I have never checked “total alkalinity” or for that matter anything else other than the pH. The pH is always increasing and I am constantly adding HCL. I like to keep the pH around 6.8- 7.2 because that is where it is easiest to keep the water looking “bright and clear”
I add chlorine using the “by guess and by golly” method. This is according to the use of the pool as well as the water's turbidity and colour. (I consider green not to be a good colour for swimming pool water)

That could indicate a problem with the total alkalinity; had it checked lately?...
How's the Total alkalinity? Pretty low I would think after dumping HCL in 2litres at a time!

Today, at great expense, I bought a jar of 50 “AquaChek” test strips for the very high price of $12. These strips check for four water qualities,
Total hardness
Bromine
Total Alkalinity
pH

This is an AquaChek colour chart that agrees with the colour chart on my test strip bottle




I ran the test twice using two strips just to be sure. A total cost of nearly 50 cents! I told the wife it's sausages and beans for at least the next week.

The Total hardness test strip spot matched the 250 colour on the chart= OK
The Total Bromine test strip spot matched the 0 colour on the chart. I use chlorine so that was to be expected.
The pH test spot matched the 7.8 colour on the chart= high
The Total Alkalinity test spot matched the 180 color on the chart= a little high


Looks like I need to dump a litre or two of HCL into the pool to get things back into balance.

[peter1 Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close peter1]

Re: My Swimming pool's Total Alkalinity

Some years ago I had what was called a chemical lock in my pool. apparently its where the different chemical by products get to a level that inhibits the effectiveness of the other. Sounded like a lot of crap to me but I did notice I was getting a lot of calcium buildup that I couldn't shift even when I dosed the pool heavily one way then the other to change the PH to try and get rid of it.

The solutions from 2 pool shops were bloody expensive. A friend said he had the same thing once and just dumped the water cleaned the pool properly then refilled it. So that's what I did. Bought some cheap 1" Ag type hose and watered all the neighbours laws 3 either side and 1 up the back with the water so we all had nice green lawns for that summer.

I got 4 drums of acid and diluted it 50% and washed the walls by pouring it on well with a watering can. The fumes were "Inspirational" and avoided as much as possible. I then blasted the walls with a pressure washer and they came up white and like new.
I refilled the pool added the bit of chemistry to get it going and that was that.

The thing was, it was far cheaper to dump the water and refill than try and fix the problem with all the chemicals. I don't know what the price of water in paradise is but I think it's a good idea to start afresh every so often. I have never had any trouble with chemicals since nor had the calcium buildup.

My local pool shot does very good testing for free so I take a sample in whenever there has been a lot of rain or the kids have had a pool party or something just to have it checked but it's usually just a bit this way or that with the PH or chlorine levels. I use She'll be right mate" method myself and it seems pretty consistent. The chlorine is always a tad high ( which I don't mind) and the ph is always pretty right. I guess you have a concrete/ marblesheen pool as well as they always seem to go high and all the others go low.

I don't think I own anything else that requires so much maintenance and expense for so little use it gets.
I have seriously been looking at converting the thing to farm my own fish.
Be nice to get something out of it instead of throwing time and money in all the time.

[tillyfromparadise Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close tillyfromparadise]

Re: My Swimming pool's Total Alkalinity

Hi Peter,
I do not have any real problems with the pool. I was just curious what the Total Alkalinity was considering the concern that it might be a bit low.

It is made from fiberglass.
I absolutely agree with your observation about it costing so much for such minimal use. When the kids were living at home it got a lot of use, but now not so much. I do not swim so I often do not even go into it during the summer.
I have cinsidered filling it in, but if I do that I can not undo it.

[Tony From West Oz Vice Chairperson of WARFA Find all posts View Profile Close Tony From West Oz]

Re: My Swimming pool's Total Alkalinity

Tilly,
Stock it with Barramundi during Summer and Trout in Winter, set the pump to come on for 10 minutes every hour, add some grow beds and seedlings and you have one great garden.
Like fishing - no need to drive to the coast or a river, just get the rod out and fish in your pool.

Losrt the Chlorine though, it kills fish and the bacteria which make Aquaponics work.

Regards,
Tony

[craigcurtin Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close craigcurtin]

Re: My Swimming pool's Total Alkalinity

Tilly,
Stock it with Barramundi during Summer and Trout in Winter, set the pump to come on for 10 minutes every hour, add some grow beds and seedlings and you have one great garden.
Like fishing - no need to drive to the coast or a river, just get the rod out and fish in your pool.

Losrt the Chlorine though, it kills fish and the bacteria which make Aquaponics work.

Regards,
Tony

+1 for aquaponics - as soon as my kids are out of the house then i am converting our pool into a natural pond and stocking it as part of an aquaponics system

Craig

[tillyfromparadise Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close tillyfromparadise]

Re: My Swimming pool's Total Alkalinity

It is that time of the year to get serious

I have allowed the pool to get a bit green over the winter so yesterday morning I doused it with some aluminium sulfate powder and ran the pump for awhile.
Aluminium sulfate is a flocculant and is used by farmers for something or other so it is readily available at stock and supply agents. I got my 20kg bag a couple of years ago for around $20. It sure makes opening the pool in the spring and the odd clean up when I get lazy a lot easier than it used to be.

This morning the water was nice and clear and all the green crud was on the bottom.
A quick "vacuum to waste" cleaned all the crud off the bottom and my pool water is now nice and clean. It would have used to take weeks to do without the aluminium sulfate.

Then I checked the chemicals balance using one of my very expensive test strips and found the total hardness was OK but the total alkalinity was a little high.
The pH was around 7.2
So I glugged in a litre or so of HCL and added about 4 coffee mugs full of chlorine into the skimmer and will wait and see what magic that performs over the next few days.

I have also replaced the valve to my solar heater and have that running too.
It is a home made system that I built about 15 years ago. I bought several hundred meters of black poly pipe and put it on the flat roof of my garage and rumpus room addition.
A small portion of the water from the main pool pump is diverted to the top of the garage which is next to the pool. On top of the roof there is a manifold that feeds 4 lengths of poly that snake back and forth over the roof before rejoining and returning to the pool in a single pipe running under the ground to the pool. The only problem I have had with the solar heater is about 5 years ago one of the seals joining one of the poly runs to the output manifold started to leak.
A new seal quickly fixed that and that is it.

[Tony From West Oz Vice Chairperson of WARFA Find all posts View Profile Close Tony From West Oz]

Re: My Swimming pool's Total Alkalinity

Tilly,
For a moment there, I thought that you may have had a new use for your glycerol byproduct.

Pity, there are lots of pools which could benefit from the surplus of byproduct around the country.

Regards,
Tony

[tillyfromparadise Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close tillyfromparadise]

Re: My Swimming pool's Total Alkalinity

We had a big party this weekend with lots of people in the pool.
Yesterday the water was blue, but very hazy, hard to see the bottom. So I added a couple cups of chlorine and ran the pump all day. At the end of the day the water was still very hazy. Still the same this morning.
So I turned the pump on, added another couple scoops of chlorine and a good glug of HCL. Within 30 minutes the water was sparkling clear.

This HCL is good stuff.