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MPurcell

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Everything posted by MPurcell

  1. Add acid to bring the pH down to no lower than 7.0. Then aerate to increase the pH up to no higher than 8.0. Then repeat the process until TA is where you want it. There are two sticky threads in this forum about lowering Total Alkalinity. I would suggest you read those.
  2. You don't have to wait. The acid (HCl) disassociates into hydrogen ions (H+) and chlorine ions (Cl-). The ions are then available to enter into reaction with other compounds. Since you already have free hydrogen and chlorine ions in the water before you add the muriatic acid, you don't need to worry about it.
  3. Sodium hypochlorite solution contains both sodium hypochlorite and ionic chlorine in solution. The ionic chlorine will off-gas as chlorine gas, reducing the percentage of sodium hypochlorite in the solution. At any given pH, there will be a balance between ionic chlorine and sodium hypochlorite. Acidic conditions favor a greater amount of ionic chlorine, and alkaline conditions favor a greater amount of sodium hypochlorite. For this reason, there is a small amount of lye (sodium hydroxide) in the solution to keep the pH around 12. This helps extend the shelf life of the product. According to the Clorox company, there is also a small amount of sodium carbonate (washing soda), presumably from the manufacturing process. The rest is water. There is no salt. However, when sodium hypochlorite oxidizes organic matter it produces oxygen and sodium chloride (table salt) so there's nothing there to damage your tub or equipment. Bleach degrades rather quickly. This is why, when you purchase it for pool or spa use, it is best to get freshly made product, and not store it for a long time. For this purpose, manufacturers often put a manufacturing date on the bottle. The Great Value concentrated bleach has a date stamp on the edge of the bottom rim of the bottle. My current bottle has: 17 116 00:15 S1 GA-01. The first part of the date code means 116th day of 2017, so my current bottle was manufactured on the 26th of April. It's starting to get a little old, but it is only a half gallon and I use so little every day that it lasts a long time.
  4. That test kit uses orthotolidine reagent with color comparator block for chlorine/bromine. You won't find it to be accurate enough to follow the methods here. I'm not familiar with the alkalinity test in that one. If you want to follow the methods on this forum and on the Trouble Free Pool forum, you will need to get a good test kit. That test kit will have the FAS-DPD titration test for chlorine/bromine and titration tests for total alkalinity and calcium hardness. The pH test is a color comparator block similar to the one in your Poolmaster kit. The chlorine test kit will also contain a reagent to test for combined chlorine, and a separate test for CYA. The Taylor Technologies test kit for chlorine is K-2006 and the one for bromine is K-2106.
  5. What test kit did you order? I suspect the caution about not mixing chemicals means not to mix them together before you put them in the water. Put each chemical in the water separately. You can add different chemicals sequentially with a few minutes between. You can run the bubbles on that spa for a few minutes and it will do a great job of stirring it all up. I have no answer for why your pH and TA are reacting that way. However, neither test strips nor pool store testing can be relied on. If you want to know what is really going on, you need a good test kit, preferably with Taylor reagents.
  6. Buy the Great Value brand "concentrated" bleach. It is 8.25%. There is a small amount of, I believe it is lye, which helps keep the sodium hypochlorite from degrading too fast. Liquid chlorine in the pool section or from the pool store will also have a little lye. The other ingredients are water, and any traces of substances from manufacturing. I don't understand your bias against bleach. It doesn't matter how large or small the body of water is. One person produces X amount of bather waste - sweat, urea, cosmetics, deodorants, etc., etc. Therefore, it takes X amount of chlorine to oxidize and remove that bather waste. The size of your tub will have an effect on chlorine demand, but not on bather waste.
  7. Personally, I would not throw the MPS away, nor would I use it every day. The biggest thing about MPS is that it adds sulfates to the water which build up over time, and create a bit of a negative environment for the equipment. You already learned about it interfering with the CC test. There may be situations where you want to use it occasionally, though. For instance, you can use it during a soak when you have bathers in the tub. For daily use, use bleach to oxidize bather waste. The amount of bleach you need to add after a soak is independent of the size of the tub. The rule of thumb is approximately 7 ppm of chlorine for each person hour at 104 degrees. At 100 degrees, the number will be significantly lower. You can arrive at a number for your tub by trial and error and testing daily for a while. If you haven't done so already, read the sticky thread about chlorine demand. The general idea is to add enough chlorine each day to exactly replace the chlorine demand of the tub, and then also add enough chlorine after each soak to exactly oxidize bather waste.
  8. If your pH is 8.4 or higher *after* adding 202 grams (7.1 ounces) of sodium bisulfate, then either your pH was unbelievably high to start with, or your test strips are completely useless. According to the Pool Calculator, adding 7.1 ounces of dry acid in 210 gallons of water will lower pH by 5.69 and lower TA by 99. My bet is that your test strip for pH is useless. To follow the procedures and advice on this forum and on the Trouble Free Pool forum, you really need a "good" test kit. For a chlorine spa, that would be either the Taylor K-2006 or it would be the TF-50 or TF-100 from TFTestKits. The best price I have found online for Taylor test kits and reagents is Amato Industries. These test kits are a little pricey, but if you use a good test kit and the information from these forums, you will save money in the long run, and be able to keep crystal clear water in your spa. You should do some study so that you understand the principles of water chemistry and managing a spa. You can read the sticky posts in this forum and also the ones at the Trouble Free Pool forum. You could also read several of the recent threads in this forum which discuss many details of using chlorine in a spa and keeping the water balanced. If you decide you want to follow these methods, then buy a good test kit and start your journey.
  9. Don't mix bleach directly with acid even if the concentrations are fairly weak. However, adding either directly to the tub water is not dangerous. More about CSI here.
  10. Let's hope it was just some by-product of the tree being cut down near by. I've already addressed this, I believe. The reason a "good" test kit is recommended is because pool store results and test strips are almost always unreliable. Now does the LaMotte ColorQ digital reader system qualify as a "good" test kit? Probably not, but I think you could rely on the LaMotte test kit results before you could rely on the pool store test results. Thousands of pool and spa owners have proven over and over that a "good" test kit is essential to follow the procedures given on this forum and the Trouble Free Pool forum. I've also addressed this: The guy at the pool store is giving you false information about bleach. If you don't want to believe me, that's your choice, but before you choose to believe him, please do some independent research on your own. Also ask yourself which one of us stands to benefit financially from the answer given. I don't know how the ColorQ checks for calcium, but the accurate test, the one you can rely on, is the Taylor titration test for calcium hardness, which is contained along with the other tests in the K-2006.
  11. H3BO3 is boric acid. The chemical structure is 1 boron atom with 3 hydroxyl radicals (OH)- If you use the powdered boric acid, you could use a large pail of water to dissolve the powder before adding to the spa. Using very hot water will help it dissolve more rapidly. If you do use the boric acid, there is very little impact on pH or TA. If you put the powder directly into the spa, I've heard it can float on the surface for a while and is hard to stir in. The other ingredient in muriatic acid would be water. I'm not sure, but I don't think there is anything added to stabilize the acid. So the answer is yes, it doesn't matter the concentration as long as you do the math to get the result you want. If you are cost conscious, you need to think about price per unit of hydrochloric acid. The pool calculator uses six concentrations of muriatic acid at the top in the pH section, 15.7%, 28.3%, 31.45%, 34.6%, 14.5% and 29%. At the bottom under effects of adding chemicals, it gives you two concentrations for muriatic acid, 15.7% and 31.45%. So if you use another concentration, you will have to adjust the math accordingly. The same holds true for bleach, both in terms of math and in terms of cost. In the US, if the bleach bottle does not list the concentration, it is pretty commonly 3% or less. 5.25% used to be a fairly common concentration, as well as 6%, and nowadays 8.25% seems to be the more common. There is quite a bit of variation about what is available. Over here, the stronger concentrations are sometimes referred to as ultra bleach or super bleach or something like that. However, with the pool calculator you can actually add the percentage of chlorine directly into the computation at the top where you are computing amount to add. At the bottom of the pool calculator under effects of adding chemicals, it gives you five options, 5.25%, 6%, 8.25%, 10% and 12.5%.
  12. I was looking for this post earlier but just now ran across it. If you decide to use the borax product, you can use the pool calculator to figure out how much to add. Down at the bottom in the "Effects of Adding Chemicals" section select sodium tetraborate pentahydrate in the dropdown. I don't know if the molecule is different but that calculation should work close enough. One chemical name says 2 sodium 4 boron 5 water and the other says 1 sodium 4 boron 5 water. Edit: After a little study, I think the two names refer to the same chemical formula. The anhydrous form of borax molecule is 2 sodium, 4 boron and 7 oxygen atoms. The Crystaline form of borax molecule is the same formula, but either bound with 5 water molecules (pentahydrate) or 10 water molecules (decahydrate). Apparently using sodium tetraborate pentahydrate is just a lazy way of writing it.
  13. Borates in the water are definitely optional. Borates help buffer the water chemistry so that the pH drifts less. Borates also improve the "feel" of the water for many people. However, you can usually manage pH drift by adjusting TA, and water feel is quite subjective.
  14. Missed your previous post. Disodium tetraborate decahydrate in English. Basically the same thing as 20 mule team borax but has water bound into the molecule.
  15. You would want granular boric acid. Your best bet would be a an online supplier. It is not a product commonly sold in pool stores. boorzuurpoeder = borax powder I can't tell if that is boric acid or sodium tetraborate. For example https://www.da.nl/product/41697/boorzuur An alternative is to use laundry borax. In the US the most common product is called 20 Mule Team Borax. The ingredient is sodium tetraborate which is a natural mineral. To use borax which raises pH quite significantly, you also need to keep the pH in balance with acid. Since borax does not increase TA very much but acid reduces TA significantly, you would also need to increase TA back to its desired level with baking soda.
  16. Temperature has a major effect on the amount of bather waste. If you are soaking for 3-4 hours then the temp must be a little lower, maybe around 37 or 38? At 40 degrees celsius, people can't generally stay in much longer then half an hour. But at 40 deg one person causes about 6 or 7 ppm of chlorine demand in an hour. Using farenheit, I know I sweat only a little at 99, a bit more at 100, and significantly at 101. Those would be equivalent to 37.2, 37.8 and 38.3. At 37 deg cel the chlorine demand might be as low as 1-2 ppm per person per hour, so four people for four hours could still be as much as maybe 32 ppm chlorine demand. You could easily take the free chlorine down to zero, and it doesn't take very long for bacteria to start growing in water that warm. If the ozonator is working, it will help as it will be continuously oxidizing bather waste, maybe reducing chlorine demand by as much as half. You might rather use the HTH cal hypo briquettes in a floater, as you have more wiggle room with calcium content than with CYA content. That strategy could work, I think. If it were me, I would try it. You wouldn't be very happy with a high CYA in a spa. See the chlorine CYA chart. Anything above 60 is not recommended, even for pools. At 80 ppm CYA, you would never let the chlorine get below 6 ppm, target 9-11 ppm, and have to take it up to 31 ppm to shock. Another strategy is to use non-chlorine shock which is potassium peroxymonosulfate (MPS). Again it is a sulfate, so not recommended for daily use, but you can add it while bathers are in the spa. It is an oxidizer, not a sanitizer, but it will oxidize the bather waste and reduce chlorine loss. The other negative effect is that is will throw off the test for combined chlorine while it is present, but that is minimal.
  17. A spa ozonator routes the circulating water through a cell within which ozone is generated. The ozone has two important effects, 1) oxidizes bather waste and 2) uses up free chlorine. The ozone, which is a gas, only works on the water within the cell, so it works effectively in a spa where the full body of water is routed through the cell in a relatively short period of time. When bather waste is present, it is oxidized by the ozone and not returned to the pool, thus reducing chlorine demand. If there is no bather waste to oxidize, then the ozonator creates additional chlorine demand. If there is high use of the spa, then it is good to use the ozonator but if the spa gets infrequent use, then the ozonator just increases chlorine demand. I'll let Richard Falk screen name ChemGeek explain: Some spas allow you to turn off the ozonator. One other point, ozonators do not tend to last as long as other equipment, and when they fail, the owner of the tub usually never knows it, as there is no indication that the ozonator is not working except chlorine demand.
  18. Yes, bleach (natium hypochlorite / sodium hypochlorite) is your main source of chlorine. In the dichlor then bleach method you add dichlor only until you achieve a CYA level of 30 ppm, then you switch over to bleach. It usually takes about a week or two of dichlor to get to that level. Then you use only bleach until the next drain and fill. You can use trichlor the with the same effectiveness as dichlor. The ratio is 0.6 ppm of CYA for each 1 ppm of chlorine. In your tub 1250 liters (330 gallons) you will need a total of 2.4 ounces of trichlor which will raise the free chlorine by 50 ppm and CYA by 30 ppm. With trichlor pucks or tabs I guess you would have to crush it and weigh the powder. The 2.4 ounces is by weight and not by volume. Each addition would be a very small amount. I have never tried to crush a trichlor puck so I don't know how effective it will be. I have crushed bromine tablets, and they are hard to get to powder. You wind up with small granules that still take quite some time to dissolve. However, I think bromine tabs are quite a bit harder than trichlor.
  19. Natrium is the Latin word for sodium. The chemical symbol for sodium is Na. So it looks like you can use the Glorix or other laundry bleach as long as there are no scents added and it is not splashless. Natrium hypochlorite = sodium hypochlorite. You would not want to use Cal hypo (calcium hypochlorite) to add chlorine to your spa even if it was 100% because you would be adding too much calcium to the water in a very short period of time. For each 1 ppm raise in chlorine, you would add 0.7 ppm of calcium. As I said before, pH minus contains sulfates (or sulfites) which can be a negative for the equipment. If you can obtain muriatic acid, that would be preferable. Many people use pH minus though, and if you plan to change water more frequently, say every 2 or 3 months, then the risk to the equipment is minimal. You will find that the people at the stores often only have part of the story, or their story is the wrong story, :). Anyway, in a spa using chlorine, you really do need CYA, usually at 30 ppm or max 40 ppm. If you don't have CYA in the water the chlorine is completely unstabilized, and the main reason that bromine is recommended for spas and unstabilized chlorine is not is because temperatures of 37 celsius and above will dissipate unstabilized chlorine very rapidly, especially at high pH. Bromine is much more stable in high temperatures and not sensitive to high pH. But chlorine stabilized at 30 ppm works very well in a spa, and many think it is superior to bromine. The advice about not using dichlor or trichlor is sensible because many pool and spa owners have not learned enough about what they are doing, so they just keep adding CYA along with the chlorine until the CYA get way too high, even into the hundreds of ppm. The higher the CYA the higher the chlorine demand, so at some point the pool starts having serious problems. See the chlorine / CYA chart for more info. Very often when people hire so called professionals to manage their pool, the pool boy uses dichlor or trichlor continuously until the CYA is too high. About the only way to deal with too much CYA is a partial water replacement. This is not too much of a problem in a spa, but in a pool it can be a real issue.
  20. The Taylor K-2006 test kit is recommended. It contains the FAS-DPD chlorine test which is a titration test. The Taylor K-1005 test kit uses the DPD chlorine test, which uses a drop reagent into a sample of water, then color comparison. FAS-DPD is more accurate than DPD, and can read concentrations above 10 ppm which DPD can not. So if you can get the Taylor K-2006, that would be a very good choice. There are some other alternatives to get FAS-DPD testing in GB and Europe. You could search this forum and the Trouble Free Pool forum as there are several threads about this in the archives. FAS-DPD chlorine test is strongly recommended for managing water quality in a pool or spa. Calcium level in a spa should probably be above 100 ppm, but levels up to 250 or 300 are not too much. Your test kit will allow you to test for calcium hardness. You should test your fill water to find out where the starting point is. Calcium hardness can be added easily, using calcium chloride, but I would never use a product to remove it. Instead, use a partial or complete water replacement. Low calcium hardness may allow foaming in a spa. Very high calcium hardness can cause calcium deposits, and possible damage to equipment. Familiarize yourself with the Pool Calculator, which has many benefits. One is it calculates the calcium saturation index based on your water parameters. I don't know what is in the liquid pH minus, but the granular pH minus products all contain sulfates or sulfites, which are not too bad in very small quantities, but as they build up with repeated use, the compounds are not good for the equipment. With a chlorine spa or pool, it is not uncommon to have pH rise and be using muriatic acid or pH down regularly. You can minimize that by having a low total alkalinity. Another help is to add about 50 ppm of borates to the water. Muriatic acid is recommended but since it is an acid, you probably won't be able to have it shipped to you. You can use dichlor or trichlor to add both chlorine and cyanuric acid (CYA), or you can just buy straight cyanuric acid, usually sold as "stabilizer." Dichlor is Dichloroisocyanuric acid, also known as dichlor or dichloro-s-triazinetrione and is marketed under many names. You could look up the chemical formula and compare to the ingredients of the products you have there. What do people use for laundry bleach there? Liquid laundry bleach and liquid chlorine for pools is basically sodium hypochlorite with a little lye to stabilize it. Over here, laundry bleach is most commonly 8.25% (6% is much less common nowadays) and liquid chlorine is most commonly 12%. But aside from strength, they are the exact same product. So hopefully you can find a source for liquid sodium hypochlorite, as that is the foundation product of the Dichlor then Bleach method. If you can find liquid chlorine, and if you can get stabilizer, then just add the amount of CYA to bring the spa up to 30 ppm and start using the liquid chlorine immediately. In that case, you can skip the dichlor. By the way, dichlor dissolves readily, but stabilizer only dissolves slowly, so you should put the amount you need in a sock and put it in front of a water jet to dissolve.
  21. Yes, that's the one. The C is for commercial. The price is a little higher because the reagent bottles are bigger, 2 oz vs 3/4 oz in the smaller kit. Reagents are guaranteed good for 1 year by Taylor, but usually stay good for up to two years if they are stored in a climate controlled environment away from other chemicals, ie. inside an air conditioned home in a dark cabinet. You may find the SpeedStir tool to be of very great value. It simplifies the testing process, and is fun to boot. If you don't have it you wind up swirling the reagent bottle by hand while you add drops with the other hand, which can be a little tricky.
  22. The LaMotte ColorQ Pro 7 with it's digital meter uses a DPD chlorine test. (I had to look it up, as not familiar with that test kit.) The digital meter is more accurate than your eyes to get the exact reading from the color, but the problem is that the test itself is only approximate, and more importantly, it only goes up to 10 ppm chlorine so does not read accurately enough to do the SLAM, which with CYA will probably be at 12 ppm or 16 ppm. You can get combined chlorine by subtracting FC from TC. But to effectively kill algae, you need the FAS-DPD titration test for free chlorine and combined chlorine so that you can keep the FC level up continuously during the SLAM. The recommended kits are the TFTestKits TF-100 or TF-100 XL, or the Taylor K-2006 or K-2006 C, for which the best online price I have found is at Amato Industries.
  23. You must turn off the ozone generator during the SLAM and the overnight chlorine loss test, but the circulating pump should run continuously. Let the water cool down to ambient temperature. 100 degree water will use up more chlorine during the SLAM. There is *no* *difference* in chemical formula between bleach and liquid chlorine. Just go to the store and look at the ingredient list on each.
  24. Your bias against chlorine may be from your experience with public pools where water management is often not optimal. The chlorine smell, skin irritation and burning eyes that is sometimes experienced in a public pool is *not* due to the chlorine, it is due to the chloramines that are produced by the oxidation of bather waste, and not in turn oxidized by the sanitizer. Another word used for this is combined chlorine. In a properly managed pool or spa, free chlorine will be maintained in the target range and never allowed to fall below the minimum, but more importantly, combined chlorine will be zero or very close to zero, and certainly below 0.5 ppm. A properly managed chlorine pool or spa should not be unpleasant due to smell or irritation. In the United States, there are only three approved sanitizers, chlorine, bromine and baquacil. Where are you located? The SWT product you have been using is made in Sweden. Baquacil is extremely expensive and has met with poor results by many, so that leaves only chlorine and bromine as viable sanitizers. I don't believe a spa will be safe to use without one of these. I personally would never try a mineral system, a silver system, or any other alternative sanitizer. Most of the alternatives will instruct you to use chlorine with them. From my limited experience and study, I don't believe that high chlorine levels for relatively short periods of time (for instance during a "shock" or "slam") will do any harm to the equipment, and keeping the chlorine at recommended levels will not unduly degrade the equipment. Having the water out of balance is much more likely to be a cause of harm to the equipment. So low pH or high pH combined with high calcium can both cause problems. The calcium saturation index should be between -0.6 and +0.6. Above or below those levels can be problems for the equipment. I would suggest that you follow the Dichlor/Bleach method that @arobbert linked above.
  25. I think mustard algae is the hardest to get rid of, but you can remove any algae. If you do have algae, follow the SLAM - Shock Level and Maintain method from Trouble Free Pool. This is written for pools, but it will work for your spa. Follow the instructions exactly. The only difference I would suggest is to let the water cool down during the SLAM process. Edit: I re-read over your posts. Based on the description of the one spot you could reach, I'm not convinced it is algae. But whether it is or isn't, how much would it cost to refill? It's only 1,600 gallons. If you drain, you can go in the tub and clean the surface with whatever products needed, including full strength bleach if needed. If you clean the tub, refill, balance the water, sanitize with chlorine, and never let the chlorine fall below the recommend minimum level for the CYA level, then you will never get algae.
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