Ok...Here it goes. I've been reading alot of the great information in the water chemistry forum so far. I have specific questions about my situation.
Brand new tub owner, filled up 5 days ago. 400 gallon tub. My current numbers (tested at the store lab):
Free Chlorine - 1.5 PPM Recommended 2-4 ppm
pH - 8.0 (although this is the max it will test they said) on a test strip it is off the scale (>9)
Hardness - 110ppm Recommended 150-250ppm
TA - 380ppm Recommended 100-120ppm
TDS - 712ppm Recommended 0-1500ppm
Few questions. Their program spit out a number of 785g of pH down. They also recommended 1/4 cup of muriatic acid every 20-30 minutes and retest, add more if necessary until TA is in range. The recommended ranges above are from the manual. Is this proper? Is muriatic acid ok to use? They never said how much I may need to add.
Add calcium hardness increaser to increase CH (150g). This I can do pretty easily I think.
I've added 1/4 cup of acid so far and am running all the jets. I guess I'll go with their recommendations unless I hear otherwise from the forum gods.
Thanks for the info.
Mike