This video will show you how to check your PH and Alkalinity and raise then if they are too low. I use the Blue Devil 6 way test kit Buy on amazon with this link amzn.to/2uefIew
I only wish I had this problem, my wife has been bugging me since we moved out here for a pool. She got used to having one at the apartments we lived in when we first moved to Oklahoma. Thanks for the in-depth instructions, I'll remember this if we ever get that pool. Cheers brother!
If you have trouble with it still. Then I’d recommend using chemicals focused just for the alkalinity or just for ph. I’ve got a video showing how to raise the alkalinity without raising the ph. It has links in the video description too.
sweeet info man! i need this for both my pool and hottub!!!!!!!!!!!!! i'm pretty stupid at that oh stuff...lol...great vid!!!!!!!!!!nice pool btw...mines only above grounder 15' x 42..hey i luv it tho! it does the job for me and my son...!
New pool owner, pH is low, alkalinity was low. Added 1.5 lbs, per 10K gallons and boom. I still had to add a pH raiser, but it's getting there. Thanks.
Any time. If there is anything else you’d like to know, send me an email to vanelicker@gmail.com and I will make a video on it. Thanks for watching and for commenting
Thanks good information. The only thing I would do is get rid of that ph meter.(unless your calibrating everytime you test) they are cheap for a reason. Buy a bluelab meter. They are pricey but worth it.
Thanks for the great video. What are your suggestions to adding this to a new fill? Should I add this before or after adding liquid chlorine? I can't seem to find a step by step guide on the order and how far apart to add the baking soda, borax, liquid chlorine. Any suggestions are appreciated!
Suggest adjusting PH or Alkalinity first? I keep seeing Alkalinity first. My 13000 gallon pool has a PH of 40 and Alk of 6.2. Mind advising what I should do?
Hi. Great vid but what would you suggest when you have low TA and just above normal ph. I use some sodium bicarbonate which has raised the total TA a little but also seems to raise ph at the same time. What would be best to resolve this. Any help appreciated. Thanks.
I wish I'd seen this before I dumped 4 bags of a&h baking soda on the advice of a friend to kill mustard algae then I found out it doesn't kill algae it just keeps it from coming back! no my pool is super cloudy now. I'm taking a sample to a pool store to have it analyzed I'm sure ill have to put a lot of acid in now.I wish I'd just super chlorinated it to kill the algae. I hope it clears up in 48 hrs or so.
Your a smart guy. Most people don’t trust pool stores. But I see you do. I do too. Most of them are 100% honest and try to help you have a beautiful pool. Treating water is a science. Sometimes I felt like a mad scientist working on my pool. Can I offer some advice? Get a journal and track everything you do. Just a simple journal. Track the levels after a rain too. It will help you out tremendously next season and every season after that. 👍😁
Hi Van, I have a salt system and i did the Alkalinity test. it took 11 drop to get that purple water to clear up. My PH is correct. Do I go ahead and add the baking soda ? Thanks Jun.
Can you tell me your monthly maintenance routine? I have added baking soda but can't get my pH to increase. My chlorine is high too. Would the soda ash fix this problem?
Use a product called ph up. Don’t use shock from Walmart or Sam’s club. Get it from a pool store. The stuff they sell at Walmart and Sam’s is made to lower your ph and cost you more money in the long run. I learned that the hard way. Keep a journal of your tests and what you add. And how rain affects your levels. As far as monthly routine. It’s daily. Always check your chemicals daily. And use liquid tests more than strips. That’s my opinion though. Thanks for the question
Thanks for the video!! I do have a small question to ask. Pool was green shocked it, got all the debris out, added clarifier- didn't work, the added floc- didn't work, and we have vaccumed the entire pool. It's been cloudy for almost a week now and no luck. PH Is fine. I am not sure on what to do.
It would be best to take a water sample to your pool store. I add 25 pounds of shock to my pool when I start it up. It’s a 30,000 gallon pool. And I run my pump non stop till it clears up. Keep vacuuming the pool even if you can’t see the bottom. And keep scrubbing the walls till it clears up. I would advise using drops to check your water. Don’t use the strips. And Walmart or sams club shock is not as good as the shock at the pool store. 😁👍
Baking soda helps lower it and then if you want to lower it and not affect your ph then there are products that can do that. There should be a link in the video description Or check out your local pool supply 👍😁
You definitely need to raise your PH to 7.2 to 7.8. The human eye has a PH of 7.5 so thats what I would shoot for. If it is lower than a 7.2 or higher than a 7.8 your chemicals will stop working Here is a Amazon link to get PH up amzn.to/2JAcwBP Thank you for your question and for watching. Have a great week
I am still confused on alkalinity and PH. I learned at school that if PH is over 7 is alkaline and if below 7 is acid. 7 is the ideal number for water, now...how a pool can have a PH right (7) and low alkalinity ? It would be acid right..? but 7 is ok.. Can you explain. Thanks
Use 3/4 pound. That’s 12 ounces. Wait an hour and check it again. Don’t add too much at one time or your ph will get too high then you’ll have to lower it. Thanks for watching. And for commenting. Have a great weekend
It’s a big thing to learn. I learned the hard way. I’ve wasted a lot of money too. My biggest advice is to take a water sample to your local pool store and follow their advice. And when you add anything to your pool. Do it slowly and wait for the results. Do one thing at a time. 👍😁 hope this helps.
Get some PH down from Walmart or your other option is muriatic acid. Use it just like the instructions says. Sparingly..... its best to use a little and check the PH in an hour. Keep doing that until you reach 7.2 to 7.6. The ideal PH is 7.2. Your chlorine will disinfect better at 7.2😀👍 thanks for watching and for commenting
1/2 pound. But you will have to check your PH. If your PH is above 7.5 then don’t add any baking soda. If it is under 7.2 then add 1/2 pound every hour with the pump running till your PH gets to 7.2. 👍😁 have a great weekend
Vans World thanks for this helpful advice, yes I have high ph right now I bought some PH down today. So I didn’t add the baking soda. Also if you don’t mind me asking another question :) when I add any pool chemicals .. should I wait 24 hours before adding another chemical or 2 days? :) Oh oh and one more question.. am I supposed to take the chlorine tablet floater out of the pool when adding any chemicals so they don’t combine? I’m very new to this pool world, but I’ve been trying to learn all I can and still learning... still a rookie, but I can’t wait till I get this all down and becomes easy routine. :)
Great questions. I have found that people do things differently. And they will argue their case that their way is right no matter what. My advice is to ask around and compare answers then do what you feel is right. I never took the chlorine tablets out of my pool unless I was adding chemicals directly to the skimmer. You will learn over time how long to wait between adding certain chemicals. It's not the same for every one of them. As far as the baking soda goes. I wait a couple hours before checking. I give the pool pump time to cycle the water. Some people will tell you that the pool stores will try to scam you into buying things you don't need. Both pool stores here in my home town have been awesome in helping me out. I will go in and tell them my concerns and they offer advice, I will either take it or leave it. I will tell you this. The shock and chlorine tablets at Walmart and Sams club will make your PH drop. I was having the issue with my PH not staying balanced. The pool guys told me what they have seen happen in the past with chemicals from wal mart. I quit buying them and started buying from the pool store and my problem with the PH was solved. I hope you enjoy this short book I just wrote LOL LOL. Have a great week and ask me anything. I will help you out all I can.
Vans World thanks for your reply! I really appreciated it. All the information I can soak up about pool maintenance is great. It was a bit overwhelming in the beginning knowing nothing, but I’ve read so much now and I’m getting a little more used to some of the terms, also it helped like you said to gather different opinions. I spoken so far with two pool technicians one over the phone from a pool maintenance company and another I went in person to do a water test at Leslie’s Pool Supply. I managed to have the assistant manager help me and he was really so very nice and informative as you have also been to me. :) So after the water test my pool water apparently needed to have 27 fl oz of Conditioner added, brushed that through the pool and let the pump run over night. Then the next thing I am to do in 3 days wait time before adding the chemical to adjust the phosphate levels, and for that one is only 6oz. I’m finding I really like adding the liquids now over anything that’s powdered like the pool shock, now I’m wondering, does pool shock come in liquid form so the next time I do it in a week or so I’d love to have a liquid form, that’s something I’ll also ask when I go back to the pool supply store and to test my water again after doing these things that I had to add. Apparently with their test my PH was fine .. but when I did a test strip with the Clorox and spa brand where you take a picture with your phone and it tells you the results via the app, it was showing high Ph, but others say the test strips are not 100% reliable as it’s better to do the tests with the those drops they use to see what color the water turns. So that’s what they used at the store I believe. :) So I took your advice and returned my Walmart brand Clorox and spa products back, now I only get from the pool store and they’ve been really great at being what I believe to be honest and not just trying to get me to buy the most expensive thing. As it is we bought a lot of pool floaters for the kids we gave them good business that day spending around $250! lol One thing he did recommend me was getting a vacuum to get the dirt that can settle at the bottom it was the brand pool blaster iVAC, I think it was around $160... I liked it , it was rechargeable, but he said those were sold out so I’ll have to keep checking the stores for it. :)
Vans World This maybe a silly question, I noticed that the poles for the cleaning net and the brush for sweeping the pool has a warning label on it. “This pole conducts electricity.” I have an above ground pool and my filter is plugged in where the cord runs all the way to the garage. If that pole in theory were to touch that electrical cord it can zap me???? I make sure not to step on the wire when I brush pool chemicals with the broom, but that warning label made me a little paranoid, lol. My pool is under a pavilion so there’s no running wires above me, just the one cord that runs to the garage when the pump is plugged in over night.
Thanks for sharing that advice for the community. It’s feedback like yours that helps the community grow in knowledge. Thanks for watching and I hope you have a great weekend 😁👍
Lack of stabilizer, aka cyanuric acid (cya), does not cause cloudy water by itself. If the cya level is too low to start with in your pool, adding some protects the chlorine that's in your water from UV rays, and so without cya in your water, it's very hard to maintain chlorine in your pool. The cloudy water is probably the start of an algae outbreak if stabilizer is clearing it up, because you were not keeping enough chlorine in your pool. When you added it, then that allowed the chlorine to stay in the pool and fight algae, and that's because the UV rays were quickly burning it off before the stabilizer, but that is NOT a fix all, as cya can be too high also, which is more common and just as bad. High cya makes chlorine ineffective; with high cya, the chlorine is in the pool but it is not sanitizing, because the cya has too much of the chlorine bound up in reserve, and that too causes cloudy or green water via algae growth. A lot of pools folks will call very high cya "chlorine lock". They use these words to blame it on some kind of magic, uncontrolled phenomenon, when in fact it was their fault for telling you to use products that raise cya over the season that caused this so-called "lock". The proper cyanuric acid level is very important, but the industry does not teach us how to set it and maintain cya the right way. The right way is to set the cyanuric acid level by adding enough stabilizer to get cya in between 30-50 at the start of the season; check and readjust one or two times per year as it will slowly dilute due to rain and evaporation; and then keep chlorine (FC) at a minimum 7.5% of that set cya level using only non stabilized chlorine products. Non stabilized chlorine include only liquid, cal hypo or chlorine produced by a saltwater generator. Those trichlor pucks that are so popular and insidious and trichlor shock and dichlor shock all increase cya, and cya should be kept as constant as possible once you've set it so that chlorine can keep doing its job equally all season. See troublefreepool.com for all the right answers in pool chemistry. Get your info somewhere else if you don't think chemistry matters in pool care and don't mind extra work and confusion.
@@gregoryfaulkner5345 Great advice. I just left my pool guy and he doesn't understand Chlorine Block (Lock). It botthers me that my experienced pool specialist doesn't know his chemistry. On the other hand, I live in Alabama, so there's that.
You may need to shock the heck out of your pool. My pool is 27,000 gallons and it took 25 pounds of shock to open it up. Take a sample of your pool water to the pool store. They can help you out a lot. 😁👍. Have a great week.
Kita that’s correct but once you get your alkalinity in the correct range of 100-150ppm by using muriatic acid you can add borax to raise ph without effecting alkalinity. If alkalinity is out of range, ph will be hard to maintain at ideal 7.5.
@@FyoGuidesAndRides I have a saltwatwr fish tank and I use baking soda to adjust my alk. And to do that without effecting ph...you can bake the baking soda at 350 for an hour....then it becomes soda ash. Point being....use baking soda to make adjustments vs the expensive same stuff at the pool store.
Never ever add baking soda or any soda to your pool. Pool companies tell you to do this so that you have to buy more chemicals that will work less in the water. If you need to raise the alk in your pool do a % water change. If you do it the way explained here, you are filling up or taking up the "free space" in the water that you chemicals need to efficiently work in. It will be much cheaper to simply to a 25% 50% 75% or even 100% water change (depending on how long it's been since you refreshed that water) in your pool rather than add chemicals, especially base chemicals like baking soda which will mute the action of your chemicals like chlorine in your water. By replacing the water in the pool you free up molecule space in the water for your chemicals to work and you will need to use much less chemicals and they will work much faster, longer and better. You're welcome!
Then why are the pool maintenance people using baking soda borax and muriatic acid? That's ridiculous advise. I have a 25,000 gallon pool and in the city I live in it would be $750.00 or more to refill 100%. I'll keep using baking soda and having great results like in this video.
Each pool chemical, whether it's a generic chemical like baking soda, muriatic acid, bleach, borax, or a product from a pool store like TA Up or stabilizer should almost always be used for adjusting ONLY ONE chemical level. in your pool. If someone tells you that BS can be used for more than one thing, they are BS. It's for raising TA only. You'll see chlorine products on the shelf stating claims they are 4 in 1, etc. That's bull! An exception is muriatic acid. It's for lowering TA and for lowering PH, but it lowers TA in a series of downward adjustments to PH.
