Help! Used Muratic acid instead of bleach!

[waterbear]

And generally add half the recommended amounts and see where you are at, even if the recommendation is from me.

I'm not sure why you swung so high in pH. Maybe your son didn't actually put in as much as he said or my calculations could be wrong (in which case, I'd like to find out and fix it). It's been right with others using Borax so I'm not sure what happened and I'm really sorry for any trouble this caused.

Richard

A full box of borax is 4 lbs 12 oz.....almost 5 lbs. That could explain the pH rise. 3/4 to 1 cup of acid should get you back into the ballpark by my calculations.

[chem geek]

A full box of borax is 4 lbs 12 oz.....almost 5 lbs. That could explain the pH rise. 3/4 to 1 cup of acid should get you back into the ballpark by my calculations.

Evan,

From our previous discussions and your own experience, 1 box of Borax (4 pounds, 12 ounces) requires 4 cups, 7 ounces of Muriatic Acid to balance the pH. If his son did put in 4 cups of Muriatic Acid, then I would expect about 4 pounds of Borax would be required to neutralize it. About a pound of Borax is equivalent to a cup of Muriatic Acid.

Of course, he saw a much larger rise so something is amiss. Either his son did not in fact put in 4 full cups of acid, or more than 4 pounds of Borax was used, or our calculations our wrong.

Richard

[waterbear]

Richard, he said he dumped in one box....it only comes in one size....4 lbs 12 oz. so I stand by what I said in my prevoius post.

[chem geek]

Evan,

Whoops! I missed that part about dumping the whole box. If he dumped an entire box in, then the combination of 4 cups of acid and a box of Borax in a 2800 gallon pool (with 100 TA, 30 CYA) would have a net rise in pH from 7.5 to about 7.9 (close to his measured 8.0) and adding about 6 ounces of acid would bring this back down to 7.5 and 6 ounces is in the 3/4 to 1 cup range you suggested.

So I'm sorry I didn't read his post thoroughly and thank you for correcting me!

Richard