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chemgeek suggested filters to remove CH from the water as the tub is filling http://www.purewater...hosefilters.htm http://www.purewater.../products/fc024 http://www.purewater...ening-cartridge

This is great! Thank you! I'm thinking I might try the CalTreat on this fill, and get a filter for the next one.

I'm just wondering if there have been any changes to this advice in the last few months. In fresh water my CH is about 275. Just under 3 months in on the current fill, my CH is about 450. As water evaporates and I replace it, the CH just gets worse. I live in a desert in the middle of a drought, so I'd rather deal with the CH than dump the water more frequently. I've asked other places and been told there's a water filter that attaches to a garden hose. I found those on Amazon, but they talk about filtering out Chlorine and such, with no mention of calcium. That could be me not understanding what I'm reading though. http://www.amazon.com/BMS-Garden-Hose-Filter-Single/dp/B004NWZP7Y/ref=sr_1_3?s=lawn-garden&ie=UTF8&qid=1362729143&sr=1-3&keywords=water+softener I looked at the Vanishing Act Calcium remover bags, but they look to be about $35 a piece and say "Multiple calcium removers maybe needed if initial water hardness is above 200 ppm" which makes me think that could get expensive fast. Any new suggestions? Edit: And just after I posted I found http://www.poolproducts4less.com/united-chemicals-calcium-hardness-reducer-caltreat.html Thoughts?

tonight, after 24 hours and a 45 minute soak my Cl was 1, so I added 3 ounces of bleach. My pH was about 8 and TA was still at 50. I didn't add anything else tonight. I'm probably not going to be in tomorrow, but I'll test tomorrow night and see what happens. I'm hoping I can get to the daylight of the weekend before I have to fiddle with pH and TA.

No ozonator. Saturday morning, I worked on lowering the TA, keeping the pH in line and adding borax, then not immediately, but shortly after I added dichlor to get to 10. I left the tub entirely alone for 24 hours and then tested the FC. I can do another 24 hour test this weekend and see how that goes. I tested FC 15-20 minutes after I got out of the tub last night, somewhere between 9 and 9:30,and added dichlor to get to 6 ppm. Tonight, a little after I got out, about 8, I tested and it was 2.8 ppm. Which implies my weekend test was wonky. I added .1 oz of dichlor. This should be me at 27 CYA, so I'll switch to bleach tomorrow. A few minutes after I added that, I tested pH which was 7.8 and then the TA was about 50. I left those alone tonight, and I'll see how stable they are tomorrow.

When I left off yesterday, I was at TA between 60-70, and the pH was 7.4, at 100 degrees with 275 CH, and I'd just added dichlor to go up to 10 ppm for the Chlorine Demand test. - Does that need to be done with each water change? I assume so, because of differences in the water supply, but maybe those changes are too small to matter. Anyway, right at 24 hours later, my free Cl is down to 5.8 giving me a CD of 4.2. I've also got .4 Combined Chlorine. My pH is up to 7.8, TA at 70. I think I'll try a smidge of acid and test, and then after I soak test again to see if the jets changed the pH.

I'm 7 miles from the eastern edge of the time zone. Dark is just crazy early in the winter. I was wondering about lights for reading the tests. The drop test and the strips both say read in natural sunlight, and I was wondering how important that was. On the plus side, I think I'm getting the pool calculator figured out. I spent the morning adding acid, and more acid, and more acid and then borax, and more acid. But I've got the TA down to 60-70ish, and the pH is 7.4, at 100 degrees with 275 CH. That should be about right. The TA could come down a little, but I'll do that tomorrow when I test everything again. I just added dichlor to get to 10 ppm and I'm going to leave it alone for 24 hours to get the Cl demand.

I had the stickies open and was still confused. 2 things that would have been great to see in the stickies are 1) get a small kitchen scale if you don't already have one, and 2) what dry acid actually is. Eventually I found that what I have is what everyone's talking about when they say dry acid, but I didn't see it anywhere in the stickies, and that was contributing to my confusion. I've got a scale ordered, it'll be here tomorrow. In the mean time I'm using a glass measure and going with estimating how much I'm pouring out of the bottle based the level left in the bottle. It's not the most exact, so I'm inching my way down. I'm down to TA of 120 with my pH at 7.6 My Cl was 3. something this morning when I was checking things. When I was home for lunch at 4, I used a test strip because it was fast, and they are really not as specific as the drop tests. You guys are so not joking about that. But, knowing what the levels were this morning, it was good enough to tell me that I needed to add more dichlor. I added the same amount I did yesterday, so that should get me to tomorrow evening and I'll add more. And then there's the other strange thing. My manual says pH 7.4 to 7.6, and TA of 125-150ppm. And that last part is odd compared to everything I've seen. The advice everywhere is much lower. My goal for the weekend is to get this all set. The other problem I keep running into is the lack of daylight. We're fully dark by 5 pm, so I'm scrambling for daylight to read tests.

If I did this right, my pH is 7.6, Alk is 150, CH is 275 (city water report says average is 290). The water is warming up, it's at 67 and climbing. The tub is 290 gallons. So I need to bring the TA down, and I understand I need to bring the pH down to do that, and then aerate. Pool Calculator just says add acid but nothing useful. I've got the starter set of Rendezvous chemicals which has a calculator on their site that says to add pH down, repeat as necessary. The pH down is 95% sodium bisulfate. The instructions on the bottle say 1.5 tsp per 500 gallons, but doesn't say anything about how much that'll bring it down. I'm guessing about 3/4 of an ounce of pH down. So I should add about 1/2 of that, and then test again in a few hours? Since I'm just starting this, I haven't added anything yet, including dichor. I know I need to get started on that soon. I am just really confused.

Paddock Pools has several locations in town. They have Sundance, Caldera and Bullfrog. I think they also have Fantasy, and something else. If you like the Bullfrogs but don't like Paddock, Tropical Fiberglass Pools in St. George has been really helpful with me as I've been shopping. They do charge to deliver down here, but they're still several hundred to a thousand dollars cheaper than Paddock. They also know their products which Paddock doesn't seem to. Renaissance Pools in Henderson, on Boulder Hwy, has Nordic, Strong, Resort (also made in LV), and Viking I think. They may have something else I don't remember. Spas by Renee was mentioned up thread. There's Spapro (?), I think they're on Dean Martin Dr. Hot Tub Liquidators, iirc, is fairly new they're in Henderson on Gibson, just up from the 215. They mostly do use hot tubs, but some new with Coast, Lazy Boy and something else I don't remember. (I'm sitting on my front porch handing out candy, and working off my memory. I didn't always take notes, and really don't have them with me right now.)