How To Add Calcium Hardness To Pool

Your puddle water might look sparkling articulate, only your water may likewise incorporate a hidden danger to your pool equipment and surfaces: depression calcium hardness. Maintaining the calcium hardness level of your swimming puddle water can assistance prevent the addition of even more chemicals to assistance balance the water, and aid prevent costly repairs in the future.

In this commodity, I explain how to raise your calcium hardness level, and discuss why it'due south important to keep an eye on this water balance level, and what can happen to your pool if the water is kept at a calcium hardness level that is too depression. I also explain more about calcium hardness in my articles: Maintaining Puddle Calcium Hardness, and Testing Pool Calcium Hardness. If you need to lower your calcium hardness level, y'all tin read this article on how to practice information technology: Lowering Pool Calcium Hardness.

Importance for your pool

Why is Raising Puddle Calcium Hardness important?

Keeping calcium hardness in residue is one of three important water balancing steps. The other two are pH and total alkalinity. You should e'er make sure you have beginning balanced total alkalinity, then pH, and lastly calcium hardness when balancing your puddle.

The platonic range for calcium hardness in swimming pools is 150-400 ppm (parts per million), so if you try to keep your calcium hardness in the midpoint between those two limits, then y'all should exist fine.

Why raise the pool water calcium hardness level?

For a swimming puddle, depression calcium hardness can bring problem. Water without acceptable minerals dissolved becomes ambitious, and seeks to add minerals dorsum into itself. Unless you intentionally add together these minerals dorsum in to the pool, the water will dissolve what information technology needs from any office of your pool that contains concrete, stone, grout, or masonry, or any metal surface in your puddle or pool equipment.

With low calcium hardness pool h2o, yous can await problems with:

Pitting of physical or stone pool decks.
Grout dissolving, turning gritty and fragile when you run your finger over it.
Pitting on concrete pool walls.
Corrosion of metal surfaces, such as pipes, filters, heat exhangers, underwater lights, metal screws, and hardware.

If damage from soft water occurs, there is no way to disengage the damage. The only option is resurfacing or replacing the impairment surface or office. Equally an example, the estrus exchanger for my pool heater is $i,400 USD to purchase, plus an afternoon of $100/hour labor to replace the unit, so a niggling testing to make certain my h2o is balanced goes a long way to prevent very plush repairs. This is again a great reason to buy a quality test kit that covers a wide range of tests. The cost of a test kit and maintaining the reagent test chemicals is well worth the investment.

Why is my calcium hardness too low?

The most common cause of low calcium hardness is the introduction of water that has fewer minerals dissolved in it:

Pelting or melted snow that finds its manner into your puddle can reduce the calcium hardness, equally water from pelting and snowfall is naturally soft water, and lacks calcium or magnesium dissolved in it. If you live in an area where excessive rain or melting snow enter your pool, you could experience a reduction in calcium hardness.
Your local water source will often take a calcium hardness level much less than that of your pool h2o. Urban water systems frequently accept calcium hardness of about 40-80 ppm of calcium. As you add water to replace water from evaporation, backwashing, and h2o lost from swimmers, the fresh water added can bring the calcium hardness level down slowly.

How to Raise Pond Pool Calcium Hardness

Adding calcium chloride is the most common way to heighten pond pool water hardness.

Raising your calcium harness with calcium chloride:

Calcium chloride is the master chemical used to increase water hardness for pools. Add this per instructions on the product label. You should be able to look up the amount to add based on your puddle size and how much you desire to increase your calcium hardness value, in ppm.
Commonly the instructions say to Not dilute the calcium chloride in water. Y'all should instead spread the corporeality you are adding past getting down close to the water and spreading (if in powder form) or pouring (if in liquid class) into the puddle. Make sure yous are not spreading or pouring into the wind. Y'all also might want to only add a portion and so test earlier adding the residual into the water, make sure you lot do not add together as well much and then need to lower the calcium hardness.
Look at nigh six hours for the calcium chloride to dissolve into the water, and then retest the calcium hardness level.

Tips on raising your swimming pool calcium hardness

If you lot know your local water source tends to exist hard water, it would be best to stay to the low end of the calcium hardness ideal range, as any new water you lot add will increase the calcium hardness level over fourth dimension. After several years of maintaining a pool and watching your exam results, you lot volition know if this needs to be done.

You demand to make certain that if you already tested pH and alkalinity, and have added sodium carbonate (soda ash) or sodium bicarbonate (baking soda), you lot need to expect several hours to make sure these dissolved into the water before calculation calcium carbonate to raise the calcium hardness level. If you lot exercise not, your pool h2o might become cloudy, as the calcium carbonate will not dissolve equally hands.

Conclusion

Maintaining a balanced calcium hardness level in your pool is important, as water that lacks enough calcium can dissolve, pit, corrode, and etch the surfaces of your pool containing minerals the pool water is seeking.

Testing the pool water and adjusting the calcium hardness so that the level is balanced can aid preclude costly repairs to your swimming pool, and enjoy information technology for years to come.

Source:

"Puddle & Spa Water Chemical science, A Testing and Treatment Guide, Waterproof Edition, 2005. Taylor"
Wikipedia: "Hard Water, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_Water