Welcome to our forum.
Whats you take on raising ALK without raising PH....Say a 10 ALK with a PH of 7.8.Curious to your suggestion on this, maybe I missed it somewhere.
To raise TA just add Baking Soda. It will raise TA, but won't raise pH very much. i.e. In a 400 gal tub, 1 oz BS will raise TA by ~11 ppm, but will only raise pH by ~0.02.
Not true!In my 400 gallon tub I use baking soda to raise both TA and PH. I can get my TA from 80 to 120 and PH from 7.2 to 7.8 using baking soda.In my 13,000 gallon pool - it has no effect on PH. I use borax for raising PH.
And some people wonder why sometimes us "newbies" have problems and get frustrated over trying to get our hot tubs properly balanced in all respects; even the "experts" don't always agree. I think I will just relax and not try to micromanage my water.....just get the readings reasonably close.Heck, now I'm learning that trying to be too precise with the pH is not such a huge deal because it's gonna change anyway due to aeration when I use the tub............lol
Actually, the trick is to determine who the experts really are, and ignore the rest. LOL
If you see the pH rise much higher than 8.0, then the baking soda may not be quite pure (it might have some sodium carbonate in it) or some outgassing occurs almost right away. When the pH is very high, say 9.0, bicarbonate will lower the pH, not raise it. The "natural" pH when adding baking soda is dependent on temperature but is in the range of around 7.8 to 8.0.The MSDS says it's 100% sodium bicarbonate, but clearly if you are seeing a larger pH rise then there's at least a little base getting added or there's outgassing (bubbling) that happens very quickly, perhaps during addition since the TA is very high locally when you are adding it (i.e. some carbon dioxide outgasses right away). That's probably the explanation and would account for most people's experience when they add baking soda. That would mean that the way it is mixed would make some difference.