Refill Advice Needed

[spanewbe]

We have had our Euphoria for one month now and are in the process of completing our first drain and refill as some on the forum suggest is wise.  We followed our dealer's instructions for our first fill last month but never felt that we had our water in perfect balance.  We are going to follow Hottubber's recommended fill plan (from a March 9 response to one of my posts) this time and see if we get better results.

Thus far we have done the following:

- drain
- clean shell
- refill
- add one 16 oz. bottle of Leisure Time Metal Gon, a mineral sequestering agent in liquid form while the tub was refilling as per instructions on bottle (Hottubber said to adjust alkalinity & calcium hardness before adding the Metal Gon, so I hope we did not mess anything up too badly)
-start spa after proper fill level reached
- test alkalinity with Taylor kit; reading = 150
- add 1 oz. Marquis pH & alkalinity down & wait 30 minutes
- second alk reading = 140
- added another 1 oz. of Marquis pH & alkalinity down
- third alk reading = 140
- spa frog is still out
- write this message

Does the pH & alk down take time to work?

Should we shock now while spa is heating or wait until we have the alk in the proper range?

How do we test and adjust calcium hardness?

We are confused, as you can tell.  Help please.

[Brewman]

What are your current alk, ph and hardness readings?
Brewman

[wmccall]

I always wait 24 hours between PH readings, but you don't say what the PH is.   I can tolerate a slightly high alk is PH is low already.  For some people's water it can be hard to get the perfect readings for both.  I keep my PH at 7.2, if I try to go to 7.5 the alk goes too high.

[spanewbe]

Ok.  Here is this morning's test results, confirmed by using both a test strip and a Taylor kit:

alk = 140
pH = 8.2 or higher (beyond the scale of the tester)
hardness = 170 - 250

Any ideas of where to go from here?

[Vinny]

Lower the PH to 7.2 - 7.6 and don't worry about ALK.

[Tman122]

Yes continue to lower your PHto 7.2-7.6 once that is achieved check ALK and monitor. I would actualy go as close to 7.6 as possible as long as your Total Alk is close 80-120. If you are using Dichlor or Bromine MPS your PH will have a tendency to creep down as your water ages because of the addition of Cyunaric Acid.

Most important, relax, one adjustment a day, and don't forget to sanitize.