New tub owner, High total alkalinity

[M4T VW]

Hello everyone

I had my new hotsprings hot-tub installed this week so looking forward to using it more. It was filled on Tuesday and took 24 hours to heat up. I tested the water and went in on Thursday and everything was fine.

It's running an ACE salt system which now has kicked in and the screen says it is within the green line so that is working correctly.

I have tested the water today (Saturday) and the total alkalinity and PH are miles high. I would say the TA is 180-250 where it says on my test strips it should be under 120. How can this have got so high in the past few days? The PH is also high, off the scale on the test strips.

I have been working today to lower the TA & PH using a PH reducer. My tub is 1500 litres so i have been adding 10 grams of PH reducer to one litre of water, mixing it well and putting it in (the water was from the tub). I have put the jets on for 30 minutes at a time to mix it all around. This is what it says on the back of the bottle and i have done this about 5 times but the TA & PH remain high. Am i doing the correct thing or should i be doing more?

I dont want to add a load in to find there is an easier or better way to bring the TA & PH down.  I have noticed that the CH has been getting less and less during this time which i think is correct, but we can add that back in later (The ace will do this for me but we need to sort the TA first).

Thanks for reading, I just want some assurance that what i'm doing is correct.

Regards

Mathew

[castletonia]

Your high pH and alkalinity is due to your source water.  Nothing you can do about that.  Add the pH decreaser directly to the hot tub,  not need to mix and create acid water.  With your alkalinity as high as it is, it will take daily dosing of pH decreaser to bring them down.  Don’t be surprised it if takes 7-10 days.

in my showroom, I had total alkalinity of 225 and I had to add for 9 days.  My pH also went up the first day due to the aeration of the water caused by running the jets.

[M4T VW]

Hi

Many thanks for the reply.

This is what i expected to be honest, i just wanted to make sure i was going around it the right way.

I have been mixing 5 litres of spa water and 50g of PH reducer twice today and it doesn't seem to be moving much. I will have to keep at it and buy some more PH reducer before i run out. Currently i have put about 300 grams in total which is about half the bottle.

Thanks

Mathew

[mrwrick]

Go to the Forum for Pool Spa water chemistry. There are excellent water chemists available to assist with using common household chemicals to achieve all water chemistry goals. Saves money and I think they yield a more direct result than the prepared expensive industry bottles of same stuff. Good luck.