Ph v ta

[CarlD]

You said you have a plaster pool? That changes things.

You need to start lowering your T/A to 120-125 as your upper limit. For a vinyl pool 180 seems to be the safe upper end.

Look up our thread on lowering T/A via the ratchet method (you "ratchet" it down).

You lower pH with acid, which brings T/A down with it. Then you aerate to raise pH without T/A rising again.
Now you "ratchet" T/A down by lowering pH again, then aerating to raise it.

I'd aim for 100 as my target if I were you.

[clueless at times]

OK...I add acid to lower PH which lowers TA. That much I understand. I do it in stages so as not to go to far.But how do I "aerate" the pool. I have never done that and am not sure what that means.

[clueless at times]

waskydiver, not so interested in perfect numbers as much as I am concerned that with the plaster pool, the high TA could cause problems.

[Watermom]

To aerate, you can turn your return jet eyeballs upward to create rippling/bubbling on the surface. Or throw in a bunch of kids to play around. Anything that causes splashing will aerate.

[wposton84]

I've never heard of aeration before, does anyone have an idea how it raises pH??

[clueless at times]

Well thats easy enough...thanks

[CarlD]

I've never heard of aeration before, does anyone have an idea how it raises pH??

Not sure of the chemistry, but there's a gasification process that turns an acid into a hydroxide by the removal of, I think it's CO2. Chem_Geek has the whole chemistry of it down pat.

If your T/A and your CH are both too high, it's easy to get cloudy water. For plaster pools, usually a CH of 200 to 400ppm is recommended. But if your CH goes to 500pm and your T/A rises, then you'll get cloudy water.

Most vinyl pool owners don't have high calcium so it's not a problem if T/A is higher.

[chem geek]

The short answer is that carbon dioxide in water is carbonic acid so when you are removing carbon dioxide from the water you are effectively removing carbonic acid -- removing an acid raises the pH. For technical reasons I won't get into here, the TA does not change.