The water looks clear, the chlorine level is correct, the pH is where it should be and stable, but the TA is registering at around 200ppm.

Filter is working well and the pressure reads ok.

Short of taking a bucket of water over to my local pool shop, should I be throwing in some pH down? Or not worry about it.

 

good info and forum on pool solutions.com, this pool chemical thing is so frustrating......did not know how hard it is to balance water........................

 

This is a tough problem that is for sure, your going to have to add PH up to raise the PH too, lowering one also lowers the other and raising one raises the other. Some chemicals however will raise the PH more than the Alkalinity, but it will raise it. It will be a game your going to play for a while. How do you know your Total Alkalinity is so high??? Did you test yourself??? Usually speaking they are not that far apart, what I mean is one really high and the other is normal, but it does happen. I went through this last year and it took about a week to correct. Its not hard to balance a pool, just don't let it intimidate you!
Roger

 

Yup, I got one of those 4 in one testers - the one w/the 5 bottles.

The readings on the rest of it are ok, just the TA.

It now reads 170 because I had to add water to the pool due to evaporation. It's dropping, but still not condsidered in the optimal range yet.

Is high TA bad? From what I gathered, the high TA should make balancing the pH and chlorine difficult as well as having clear water. I'm not experiencing any of those, though.

 

High TA will make the water cloudy and birn your eyes some. Your going to have to lower the TA and raise the PH and your going to have to do this for a while until it is okay. keep at it it will get normal. Although it is a pain in the ---!
Roger

 

http://www.poolforum.com/dcforum/DCForumID9/482.html

This forum talks about your problem and a good solution.

 

You dont say if you have a vinyl or a marsite pool .vinyl should have aTA of 125 to175 and marsite should have 100 to150 TA ED

 

The pool's vinyl.

So far I haven't done much to it other than the normal filtering and chlorine. But, the TA's dropping.

The TA is now down to 140. So according to Ed, this is fine.


Thanks, all.

 

Just read in the little book you got with that 4 in 1 test kit. It has it all in there. ED

 

Thanks, but according to the book in the kit, the TA should be around 80 to 100.


That would seem far lower than your numbers.

Should I lower it more?

 

Im with you there . One book said TA marsite 100--150,vinyl 125---175. the other book same kind of test kit said TA of 80---100 ppm is desirable. Id say just try and stay in the middle is all say go for 100 to 125 ppm for the vinyl pool and see how it goes from there. Ed