My water is almost a week old. We haven't used the tub yet. My PH is >8 and my ALK is 150. I added a cap of PH/ALK down. How long do I wait to retest and adjust again?
Since when is balancing water that is 8+pH "micro-managing"? :-? Brooke, since you are used to seeing different results on your strips, you may want to confirm your Taylor results with test strips and/or testing at a dealer -- but assuming your pH is high, it really should be dealt with. You don't have to wait until everything is balanced to start using the tub, but running at high pH decreases chlorine effectiveness and runs the risk of scale formation if there is any hardness present!
Sometime, water tests "perfect" out of the tap... but after it settles in the tub, then gets aerated, it's true make-up shows up on tests. My water comes out of the tap at 7.5 pH/100 TA, but by the next day tests off-the-scale high for both. It requires a lot of acid to bring down the pH (in my case over 20 oz.). Using unbuffered MPS to shock will help bring the pH down. Don't worry about your TA until you get the pH to hold where you want it. Then, if the pH becomes volatile, you can work on TA with baking soda. In the meantime, if you have hard water, a stain/scale preventer is in order -- and you should use more chlorine than normal to make up for the fact that very little of the chlorine is in the killing acid form at pH over 7.5.
