Filled my tub for the first time since spring last week and my total alkalinity came in around 240 ppm right out of the hose. I've been slowly bringing it down with dry acid, letting it circulate for 30 minutes between doses, but it's taking a lot more product than I expected to move the needle. Curious if anyone else sees this with fall fills - I'm on well water and wondering if the chemistry shifts seasonally or if my source just runs high in general. My pH is sitting at 7.8 which isn't terrible, but I don't want to chase that until the TA is in a reasonable range first.
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First fill of the season and my alkalinity is way off - normal?
- Thread starter D Hartley
- Start date
Well water can absolutely come out of the ground with TA in that range, especially if you're drawing from a limestone aquifer. Seen 250+ ppm from wells in the Carolinas pretty regularly. The dry acid approach is fine, but it is a slow process by design - you're essentially working against the buffering capacity of the water itself, which is the whole point of alkalinity.
One thing that helps is aeration between doses. After you add the acid and it circulates, run your jets with the cover off for 20-30 minutes. It lets CO2 off-gas, which actually helps the TA drop more efficiently. You'll use less product overall and the pH swings are easier to control. Also worth testing your source water and writing those numbers down somewhere - if you're going to be filling from the same well every season, knowing your starting point saves a lot of guesswork next year.
One thing that helps is aeration between doses. After you add the acid and it circulates, run your jets with the cover off for 20-30 minutes. It lets CO2 off-gas, which actually helps the TA drop more efficiently. You'll use less product overall and the pH swings are easier to control. Also worth testing your source water and writing those numbers down somewhere - if you're going to be filling from the same well every season, knowing your starting point saves a lot of guesswork next year.
Dry acid will get you there but yeah, it takes patience when you're starting that high. What helped me was doing bigger initial doses and aerating the water between treatments rather than just running the jets - pointing a hose at the surface for 10-15 minutes after each dose off-gasses CO2 faster and lets the TA actually drop instead of just bouncing back up. It's one of those things that feels counterintuitive but makes a real difference.
Also worth noting that if you're refilling and starting from scratch anyway, getting your bromine system dialed in from the beginning makes the whole process easier since a stable sanitizer foundation means you're chasing fewer chemistry swings overall. I started using the aquadoc bromine starter setup from mavaquadoc.com on my last refill and it at least gave me a clean baseline to work from while I was still correcting the TA. Either way, get that alkalinity into the 80-120 range before you worry too much about anything else - trying to balance pH on top of a 240 TA is just fighting yourself the whole time.
Also worth noting that if you're refilling and starting from scratch anyway, getting your bromine system dialed in from the beginning makes the whole process easier since a stable sanitizer foundation means you're chasing fewer chemistry swings overall. I started using the aquadoc bromine starter setup from mavaquadoc.com on my last refill and it at least gave me a clean baseline to work from while I was still correcting the TA. Either way, get that alkalinity into the 80-120 range before you worry too much about anything else - trying to balance pH on top of a 240 TA is just fighting yourself the whole time.