Pool Installation Gold Coast

 With all of the difficulties calcium can cause, your first instinct might be to try and remove it completely – but that would be a mistake. While high calcium levels can lead to cloudy water and scale, low levels of calcium aren’t any better.

 Here’s why: Water naturally wants to be balanced – and if your swimming pool water doesn’t have enough calcium, the water will actually try to balance itself out by drawing calcium from, say, your plaster pool walls in order to satisfy its need for the mineral. If you’ve got a vinyl or fiberglass pool, the water will attack metal fittings and heat exchangers, causing corrosion that can destroy the fittings and cause pinhole leaks (plus, it’ll leave telltale stains on your pool surfaces).

 In other words, when it comes to your swimming pool’s calcium levels, the “Goldilocks” approach is best: Not too much, not too little. You want it to be just right.

 Like pH and alkalinity levels, calcium content is all about finding the right balance. Water should have a calcium content in the range of 100-400 parts per million.

 If your swimming pool doesn’t have enough calcium, you can add a pool water hardness increaser to the water easily raises calcium levels. You can buy a bucket of granular hardness increaser at just about any swimming pool retailer.

 If you’re dealing with too much calcium in a pool, you can try adding a sequestering agent, which is a chemical treatment that fights the effects of high metal and calcium content in swimming pool water (as an added bonus, it also fights stains). If you routinely struggle with high calcium levels or if you live in a place where hard water is an issue, you should make a sequestering agent part of your regular chemical maintenance program.

 Of course, when dealing with any swimming pool issue – from calcium problems to questions about routine maintenance -- your local pool professional is a great resource. They can prescribe what is best for your pool to take care of and prevent any problem that can arise.

 There are several different products that can help you accomplish this task including Muriatic Acid. In this article, we’ll take a deep dive into the ways muriatic acid can help manage your pool such as reducing pH levels and cleaning cartridge filters.

 Muriatic acid is a diluted solution of hydrochloric acid. You can buy it at most home improvement stores, and it’s used for a variety of heavy-duty tasks, such as removing “efflorescence” (a fancy word for salt deposits on rock or stucco). It’s also used to remove rust and stain from concrete and brick.

 And, of course, muriatic acid is also a big seller at pool supply stores, where it’s often used as a stain remover. It’s also used to reduce high alkalinity or and lower the pH in pool water.

 pH is a measure of how acidic your pool water is. Things that can affect your pool’s pH include rainfall, outside temperature, and how often your pool is used.

 Ideally, you want your pH to be somewhere between 2 and If your pH is below 2, it’s too acidic. If your water is above 8, it’s not acidic enough. When your pool has high pH/low acidity, chlorine is less effective, your pool water can become cloudy, and you may notice scaling on your waterline tiles and other surfaces.

 The quickest way to get your pH back to an acceptable level is to use a chemical pH reducer. Pool supply stores sell muriatic acid or sodium bisulfate as pH reducers. Sodium bisulfate, or dry acid, comes in a powder form and is more mild than muriatic acid, so it’s a little safer to use, but many pool owners use generic muriatic acid as a substitute for pH reducers.

 First things first: You need to know how much muriatic acid to use. For an average-sized pool (think 15,000 to 20,000 gallons), you’ll need about a quart of muriatic acid. If your pool is much larger or much smaller than average, you should check with your pool professional.

 Fill a five-gallon bucket with clean water (you’ll want to make sure the bucket is safe to use with muriatic acid – it can be too harsh for some types of plastic). Add the muriatic acid to the water (be sure to pour slowly to avoid splashing) and stir carefully with a wooden stick.

 Slowly pour the mixture into the deep end of your pool, and wait a few minutes for the solution to disperse. Wait a few minutes, then turn on your pool pump so the muriatic acid can circulate through your pool’s filtration system.

 Wait a few hours and test your swimming pool water again. If the pH is back within an acceptable range, you’re good to go. If your pH is still too high, you’ll need to go back to step one and repeat the process.

 Muriatic acid isn’t just helpful as a pH reducer: It’s super-helpful for cleaning cartridge filters (it breaks down buildup in a snap). It’s also a powerful stain remover: Muriatic acid can take rust stains off of your pool’s surfaces, and it can even clean the grout between your swimming pool tile.

 Muriatic acid works well for removing stains on gunite pools, but it’s too harsh for vinyl liners. Instead, look for a cleanser that’s specially formulated for vinyl pools.

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 Of course, whether you’re using it to balance your pool water or keep your swimming pool free of stains, the most important thing to remember about muriatic acid is safety.

 Is muriatic acid dangerous? Like any other swimming pool chemical, it can be harmful if not used as directed. But as long as you follow proper safety procedures, there’s nothing to worry about.

 If you do get muriatic acid on your skin, wash the area with clean water right away (it’s a good idea to keep a garden hose or a bucket of clean water nearby).

 When it comes to swimming pool maintenance, muriatic acid keeps your water balanced and your chemistry in check. And when everything is in balance, you’ll spend less time scrubbing algae -- and you’ll have more time to enjoy your pool.

 pH is the term used to refer to the degree of activity of an acid or base (alkali) in the water. It is the most important chemical factor to be maintained in swimming pools. pH is measured on a scale from O to 14 with 7 being neutral. Pool water pH is best when kept in the range of 2 to

 A value of 7 to 14 is considered basic with 14 being the greatest base activity. Another word for basic is alkaline; however, this is not to be confused with total alkalinity. pH and total alkalinity are not the same but can be influenced by each other.

 A pH value between 0 and 7 is considered acidic with 0 being the greatest acid activity and getting weaker as it approaches a value of When pH remains below 2, the water is considered to be corrosive. This means etching of plaster and metals in equipment such as heat exchangers will result. In addition, it is more difficult to keep chlorine in the pool because while more effective as a sanitizer at the low pH, chlorine is also much less stable resulting in the consumption of larger quantities of chlorine than would be used at normal pH levels.

 Maintaining the pH higher than 8 will increase the tendency to form scale or cloudy water. Calcium, the major component in scale, is a relatively unstable mineral and when the pH is high, the calcium is not as soluble and it will have a greater tendency to precipitate or "fall out" of solution resulting in cloudiness or scale. High pH will also reduce chlorine effectiveness resulting in the need to maintain higher chlorine levels to achieve maximum sanitization.

 If the pH is low, a pH increaser is added to raise the pH. If the pH is high, pH Down is used. pH Down comes in two forms: liquid acid or dry acid.

 Changes in the pH of pool water can be caused by many factors but one of the most significant causes is the sanitizer used. Since the sanitizer is the most frequently added chemical in pools, it can have a powerful impact on pH and overall water quality.

 Of the sanitizers typically used in pools, chlorine is the most common. Chlorine comes in a variety of forms and varies widely in pH. For example, most tableted forms of chlorine have a very low pH and will tend to lower pH over time, while liquid chlorine is very high in pH and will tend to raise pH values. Salt is also very alkaline and will require frequent additions of acid to maintain the proper pH and overall water balance.

 The first thing to work out is how much energy your pool requires per day to run. Did you know that if you have a standard single speed pool pump it uses a lot of electricity to run? Most pool pumps for an average size pools are 1-2 Hp which equates to 700-1400watts. If you have solar heating on your roof (These are different to solar panels), then you probably also have a 0.5hp pump running (300-400watts) in order to pull the water up to your roof (through the heating tubes) and back into your pool (solar heating is therefore not free).Then add a controller and chlorinator which will add a further 200-300watts. Running these for hours a day can add thousands to your yearly electricity bill.

 Depending on the size of pool most companies recommend running 4-6 hours in winter and 8-12 hour in summer. So based on the above power figures for a larger pool running a 2 Hp filter pump with a 0.5 hp solar booster plus controller and chlorinator in summer this could easily using up to 20KWh per day (in winter you could halve this figure as a rough guide). Less drop this to 10w (18KWh if run for 10 hours) to ere on the side of being more conservative for the below calculations.

 This will depend on your energy plan (numbers easily available in your monthly bill). In Australia, all new houses are installed with a smart meter and the days of having an old meter (which gives you a huge advantage of a fixed rate across the day because energy companies can’t see per hour usage) are disappearing as energy companies continue their push to swap out these with smart meters.

 In NSW, having a smart meter forces you into one of two types of plans, either Time of Use (where you have peak, off peak, shoulder tariffs across the day) or Demand (where you have a fixed rate across the day but are charged a demand charge which essentially penalizes you for having high usage in peak period. an explanation on this is beyond this article but sufficient to say it likely won’t be in your interest to be on this type of plan if you are a high energy user during peak times …. ie if you are running a pool at the wrong time of day, cooking with an electric oven/stove, got kids gaming and use air conditioning in Summer in the magic 2-8 hour window, this is definitely not the plan for you)

 If you run your pool pump at the wrong time of day then you could be costing you hundreds of dollars a month. Many TOU (Time of Use) peak charges are 60c now per KWh and peak normally runs from 2-8pm. Based on recent AGL TOU rates as of Jan 2024 (rounded to nearest cent). If you were to run your solar pump for this full 6 hour window (10w x 6 hours =. 8KWh @ 60c = $48 then if you where to run the remaining 4 hours in Shoulder = 10w x 4 = 2KWh x 31c = $ Add these together and multiply by a 31 day month = $270 over summer!!. Alot of money just for one appliance!