Trying to raise ph adding 20 mule team borax

[aylad]

Trichlor pucks are notorious for driving pH down because they are very acidic. Also, I find that when we have tropical storm/hurricane remnants come through, the rain actually causes a drop in my pH that "normal" rain doesn't do.

Janet

[melanie612]

Thanks CarlD and Janet for your responses - I will try the bucket test CarlD and see what happens. I am using trichlor pucks and had a leak in the inline chlorinator that I didn't notice for about a week until I wondered why I had to replace them so soon when I checked them again - seal lost, wore out, don't know - it went missing and had to replace it. Now the chlorine puck use has dropped but I'm guessing that and the rains we've had probably made the ph drop from what you're saying - can't figure why it would be super alkaline. Thanks so much for the advice. I'll let you know what happens.

melanie612

[CarlD]

The pucks can really mess up both your pH and your stabilizer levels. You have to watch both when you use them or...big trouble!

But when you can't find an obvious solution you have to find ways to isolate your problem. If somehow, you can't get a pH reading with the bucket, then something else is going on...but I don't know what--yet

[BigDave]

Melanie,
How's your chlorine(does it keep dropping), CYA, and TA levels? How big's (gallons) your pool?
You could try mixing pool water and tap water at 1:1, 1:2, 1:4 ... until you get a clear reading to see if your pool water increases or decreases your tap water's PH.

[giroup01]

If your 5-way test kit comes with a TA test (and bromocresol indicator), do a TA test and see if the indicator turns immediately red (as opposed to green).

If it turns red immediately then the pH is less than or equal to 4.5.

[melanie612]

Hi, I never got around to posting what happened with the pool and adding borax. Here's what I did - instead of getting a five gallon bucket of my pool water I got about a gallon in a large measuring cup, then used one cup of the pool water to experiment with. I started by adding one teaspoon of borax at a time then testing. I finally got the test to the correct level. I then calculated how much that would represent in the ratio of my pool water to borax. I added 6 more boxes of borax to the pool and my PH tested 7.6 finally!!!!! I used the smaller amount of pool water b/c I thought it would be a faster method than using the 5 gallon bucket. I appreciate everyone's comments and suggestions - after that problem I had practically a worry free summer!!!!

[aylad]

I'm glad you got it back into range. Just a word of caution, though--if you have used enough trichlor to drive your pH down that far, then I'm guessing your CYA is way too high to just keep 3 ppm of chlorine in your water. Make sure you measure your CYA and use the "Best Guess Chart" here http://www.poolforum.com/pf2/showthread.php?t=365 to see how high you need to maintain your chlorine to keep from having to fight the algae again.

Janet