Friend Cites "silky Smooth Water"...

[meezy]

Friend of ours has an in-ground pool, had it for many years and has been giving me advice on ours. I'm an above-ground pool newbie. He seems to have three chemicals he relies upon - liquid chlorine, clarifier, and baking soda. Well, I've not had the chance to use baking soda yet, as my Ph/alkalinity has been fine, Ph has been a little high actually, just got it down to normal. But he says that baking soda keeps his water "silky smooth" and this makes me wonder what the heck he means. Water is water, right? How can any pool water feel different than another pool's water because of what you put in it?

[Strannik]

Normally if you want to have silky feel to your water you put salt in. If you put soda in you will throw your pH/alkalinity out of whack, and I'm not sure if the water will become any silkier.

The salt does give the water silkier feel.

[chem geek]

The other way to have the water feel silkier and have more sparkle is to have 50 ppm Borates in the water. I agree with Strannik that baking soda isn't going to do that -- it is only used to increase the Total Alkalinity (TA) of the water and quite frankly if the person is using only liquid chlorine (bleach or chlorinating liquid) then they are probably adding acid every so often and over time the TA drops so they use baking soda for that. So the baking soda is used for chemical adjustment, not to make the water silky. Also, if they kept their Free Chlorine level (FC) appropriate to their Cyanuric Acid (CYA) level, then they probably wouldn't need to use a clarifier.

You can read more about the BBB method at Trouble Free Pool (click on the Pool School link for more info).