pH: The Real Main Character of Your Pool 💧✨

Okay fam, let’s get real—your pool’s pH isn’t just some random number you check because the test kit says so. It’s literally the gatekeeper for whether your water feels crisp and comfy 🌊 or turns into a chemical warzone.

In this episode, Host Sarah chats about why pH balance matters more than you think:

• Why the “sweet spot” (7.2–7.6) is EVERYTHING 👌
• How high pH = burning eyes, cloudy vibes, and equipment crying for help 😢
• Why low pH might look clear but is actually toxic AF 🔥
• Hacks for adjusting with acid, soda ash, and not overdosing like a rookie 🧪
• The hidden link between alkalinity and pH drama (yeah, they’re toxic exes) 💔

Sarah also drops some real talk on how ignoring pH balance leads to big-time repair bills and swimmer misery. Spoiler: you don’t want that.

Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:53

Alright. Welcome back to Wednesdays with Sarah. Um, sorry I missed last week. Life's been kind of busy um since we found out that we were having a baby. We're doing a lot. We're gonna be moving soon. Come the end of October, we're gonna be busy again. Hopefully I don't miss too much, but um yeah, we got things going on in the personal life. Kind of crazy lately. Today I was gonna go ahead and talk about pH. The pH of a pool. What is pH? Why is it important? You know, what does it do? How do we measure it? How do we, you know, handle pH?

SPEAKER_01 1:37

She's got a net full of leaves, a pole in her hand, brushing down steps and skimming the lane, vacuuming floors and busting up algae, turning green to clean, just as easy as to be tough with their ear, and a ballot water crystal clear with a mouth of spark at just what you're gonna stop the day.

SPEAKER_02 2:37

We would like to extend our deepest gratitude to the sponsors of the 2025 Talking Pools Podcast Mentor of the Year Award. Our title sponsor, Blu-ray XL, is driven by a mission to simplify pool maintenance for both service professionals and homeowners, saving time, reducing unnecessary chemical costs, and removing contaminants from pool and spa waters to deliver true peace of mind. Our gold sponsor, Lamotte Company, has long been a pioneer in water quality analysis. Through decades of innovation, they have developed a broad range of world-class testing solutions trusted across countless applications, helping ensure healthier water everywhere it's needed. Our gold sponsor, RevitUp Apparel, energizes communities, teams, and businesses with bold, high quality custom apparel designed to inspire pride and unity. This recognition would not be possible without these three outstanding companies, whose support demonstrates the importance of mentorship in the swimming pool industry. On behalf of the entire talking pools community, thank you, Blu-ray XL, Lamotte Company, and Rev Up Apparel.

SPEAKER_03 3:50

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SPEAKER_00 4:21

PH is going to be the potential or the power of hydrogen. We use it to measure the acidity of pool water. Sometimes your pool water can become basic pool. We want our pool water to stay within a pH range of like 7.2 to 7.6. Like I'm going to say, if you come back after a week of service and your pool's at a 7.8 on pH, don't be mad. The pH does tend to rise throughout the week. There are things that opposite to rise if you've got water features going. When that surface tension breaks and it makes the little air bubbles, it causes the pH to rise. I think there's a few other things that can cause high pH too that it's just kind of like out of your control. But like having too high of an opalinity will cause your pH to be too high. We don't like that. Having water that's out of range, um, it can cause issues with plaster and equipment. It can cause also discomfort for the swimmers. High pH will cause like eyes to burn. Basically, you're scaling your eyeballs 8.3 and more. That's when you're gonna find some irritation. It's gonna be like thrusting on your eye. It can also make you like your skin kind of like itchy and irrit irrit the irritate. If you have too high pH, the same thing. The human body, our pHs are kind of we're lower. Usually the highest like a human body's pH is gonna be is like a 7.6, more like a 7.5 um for the high end. Uh 7.2, but it's gonna be the lower end. Um, it's not necessarily for sanitization. When you have indoor pools with no CYA, the pH can have an effect on how effective your chlorine is. Um and honestly, I don't know. I use I used to use this method called tank and pound with my first company. Um, and we would drop the pH when we shocked. Um, and we would drop it down to like a seven, sometimes a 6.8 if it was like really bad algae. And you know, you tank the pH and pound it with chlorine. And in my mind, it's like, yeah, it's more effective that way when you have like high porn with a lower pH. So is it but it's not necessarily for sanitizing, it's more for balancing the water. Water that's in balance is more comfortable to swim in and it helps prolong the life of plaster and pool equipment. So we want to keep it balanced as well as sanitized. A little thing I like to say is bases build, acids eat. So if you have basic water, your pH is really high, you're creating an environment where it can, it's basically like building blocks for itself. I've come into instances where the pH has been high for a long time, like high alkalinity, it's crazy. And you'll see there's like specks of dirt that are kind of like stuck to the plaster, like the ledges, the steps, stuff like that. Um, and it's like, you know, this is what I call sticky plaster. You're not gonna touch it and feel like stickiness, you know, you're not gonna get stuck to the wall. But as time goes on, those particles settle on the ledge, the pool boy's not brushing it, the homeowner's not paying attention, goes on for a long time, it keeps settling, and that high pH is causing it to scale. And so that that dirt basically gets stuck under a layer of scale. And you're no matter how much you brush, I mean, you could probably take a steel brush, but I don't like to be too aggressive with a steel brush. I mean, there's other ways. Steel brush is for special occasions, but you'll have to basically lower your pH. And then that's one case for me where I'll bring it down to like a 6.8 or a 7, because basically I need to burn off that scale layer um real quick. And so that's kind of the strategy I use. Drop that pH just a little bit lower than the usual, like I'm like, I mean, don't go lower than a 6.8. Seriously. Try to get that pH a little bit lower and it'll help break that sticky, that scaled over wall of dirt, which my sticky plaster is what I call it. Acids eat, you know, that's basically I just explained it in that whole story. You drop that pH, make that water more acidic, and it'll eat away at that scale layer. It's not gonna eat away if you have like a scale on your tile line that's like, you know, it's just like a thick white line of skip. It's not, it's not gonna take care of that. You need to get that bead blasted or scrape it with a pumice stone, like give your kids a dollar. I don't know. If that needs to be handled other ways, you could pour some acid on it if you want to. If it's light enough, it can help. But give them the pumice stone or in for a bead blast. When you do try to do like that tank it pound method, or if you're trying to drop your pH because of sticky plaster, um, be careful not to add too much acid at once. Definitely don't want to do that. If you overdose that pool, you just you risk leach the leaching color from your plobster. Um, it'll cause etching. It looks kind of ugly. Uh, you overdose it, it'll, I mean, basically one, you can brush your acid in, but if you put like a gallon of acid into one spot in a 10,000-gallon pool, there's a decent chance that you might see like a lighter shade of blue or whatever color your plaster is. It might look slightly lighter than the rest of the pool the next time you come to visit, especially if you don't like mix it up somehow, you know? Dilute it, brush it, do whatever. Run it over with the riptide or the hammerhead. Just don't let it just sit there on your plaster. Also, another time you might be tempted to add a whole bunch of acid all at once would be like if you I came up on this pool once and I'm not kidding, the alkalinity. Once I got to 600, it just stopped counting. I'm pretty sure I've already told that story. But um, yeah, I was like, what do I do? Because this was a little, it was a kiddie pool on an apartment complex. And so even though they were on an acid feeder, the acid feeder wasn't working. Um, and their their alkalinity got up to a 600. I didn't know what to do because it was less than 10,000 gallons in that pool. I was like, for what I need to do, for how many gallons of acid need to go in this pool to fix that? It's gonna fuck up your plaster. I can't, I can't put that much in. Like you can't even brush that much acid in. You can't. It was crazy. Like that half that pool was gonna be acid. Not really, but kind. So yeah, that one was a like that was like the first and only time I've actually seen a pool that should probably be drained because of alkalinity. So I just I kept pouring, I mean, I was pouring like almost a gallon in there every week. I was just I'm well, I was hitting it like twice a week because it was a commercial pool. So like every visit. But yeah, I really couldn't get that alkalinity down enough. It was that was stressful to me. So, like, I'm we're gonna go on to navigate over here. What are the consequences of high and low pH? From what I've been able to come up with, a longer list of consequences from having too high of a pH than the list of consequences for having low pH. They're both bad to have, just saying. Uh, both cause problems with equipment. You know, we're gonna touch on it all. But um definitely avoid having the high pH. At all costs, avoid having high pH. It's uh once we hit that 8.3, we're basic, we're building scale in the eyeballs, irritated skin, itchiness. You're also gonna be more prone to mineral staining once when you have the higher pH. Uh, if there are metals in the pool, they'll start to fall out of the water and then they attach to your plaster. Now you got little metal stains. Your plaster looks a different color. Nobody wants their plaster change in color unless you picked a shitty color to start with and you'd like to change it up, go for it. Might be fine. If I'm tempted, okay. What's the consequence? Actually, because you see the color of my hair. What's the consequence of adding? I think it's like magnesium to the pool with high copper, whatever one it is that causes the pool, water, and plaster to turn purple. I wouldn't be mad if that happened on purpose to my pool. But I ain't never gonna have a pool. That's so much work. Oh my gosh, I'm not trying to clean another pool once I get done cleaning pools. Uh-uh. And I I'd be like, if it was my pool, I'd be like, mm-mm. It's gotta be perfect. It's gotta be absolutely perfect every single time I touch it. I I wanna be able to taste test this water. Oh. Anyway, okay, so on top of causing scale in your eyeballs and on your skin, it can cause uh like cloudy water because basically your your water is scaling in itself. That water, like it's just pulling. I don't know how to explain it other than that. It's just it's basic and it's building. It's building little building blocks in that water for itself, and that calcium's turning from like dissolved calcium to like part particles particulate. However, you say that. Probably not the most scientific, but that's the way that I understand and explain it. It will cause that calcium buildup to happen in your heat heater exchanger. Uh, and then you're not getting flow through there, and you can't use your heater no more. It's kind of sad. Those things are expensive, it costs a lot to fix them too. Um, it can calcify the impeller. Like sometimes you'll see like like you're you'll get like a leak around the shaft seal and there's like water coming out, and there's like calcium on it. You got like high pH, high calcium. Sorry. Andrew needs some laptop or oh yeah, we already talked about it'll cause like um like the hard white lines on the tile line. Like I said, if it's just a little bit of scale, a little bit of like a light line, you can take the pumice stone to it. Um, I've heard vinegar, you can just sometimes we'll pour muriatic acid on it. Probably not the best for there's some stones you really shouldn't do that with, just saying, but I've actually had like a I have one customer, he took a chisel to his tile. And I mean, honestly, I probably would have done the same. He had big chunks of calcium, that pH. And like honestly, the way I fixed that one, ironically, because he had um calcium scaling, I actually had to boost his calcium. It was sitting like right like in the uh low 200s, and so I boosted him up to like a th like into the low 300s, and I was able to keep his pH a little bit lower, and it actually like it helps with the algae problem. I'll say that. Um I'm not sure if it fixed his his scale on the waterfall, but he did ship some of it away. That was such a dumb, there was no point to that story. Um except for except for the uh the algae. And he had actually he had bad cards, so he had to get his cartridges replaced. But we did all that all at once, and it was a remedy, uh, some cocktail that fixed that pool. After 350 ppm of calcium, so like and I know people who follow LSI, like some people bring it up to like a 400 and stuff. Ham it, go for it. Yeah, my husband's fist pumping right now, bring it to a 400, especially with Houston being an area that is prone to mustard algae outbreaks. I don't feel comfortable intentionally bringing my calcium past a 350. So, like 250 to 350, all right, I'll play with it. But like past that, like once we get past 400, I'm stressing. I'm like, drain your water. I don't I don't know what to tell you right now. This is I'm not having a good time, and you shouldn't be either. There's too much stuff in this water right now. But yeah, uh, it will be more prone to like mustard allergies. This is my three-legged dog, he's awesome. Except for I was ready to re-home him yesterday because he peed in my car again. I was so mad. He's a good boy. His dad cleaned the car for me, made it a lot better. Buddy, you can't be part of everything. Actually, I invited you under here. That's not fair. You can be part of it. Okay. Alright. Now we're gonna move into the consequences of low pH. So, what happens when your pH is super, super low? You're gonna have really clear water. So basically, once that pH goes like really low and it's acidic, it's dissolving and eating up everything in the water. Um, the problem with that though, even though the water looks beautiful and it's super, super clear, that's awesome. Having too low of a pH, it it's corrosive, right? It's acidic, it's eating as it eats, it corrodes. Um, and so like the parts in your like your heat exchanger and stuff, you're gonna see like wear and tear, and it's gonna like corrode it to where you can't use it either. Like, either way, if you if that water's not in balance, your heater exchanger's gone out. You only got a couple years, but hopefully it'll fall within warranty, right? But yeah, corrodos heat exchangers, like your impellers and stuff, like basically any like metal part of the pool is gonna start eating at it. It also wears down the plastic, just acids eating the plastic. Plastic's even weaker than metal is, it's not gonna hold up against the acid. We talked about how it causes etching, uh, having the low pH. You know, it's same thing. Acid eats, it's eating at the plaster. Water is hungry for something, it's not filled up, you know. It's high pH, it's got those build-in blocks in it. But when it's acidic, it's low pH. It's looking for those build-in blocks. Yeah, hard to understand. You're probably not gonna drop your acid solo that if you're gonna burn your skin, you're more likely to have like the burning atoms from high pH. So you don't really have to worry about that one too much. The main two ways that I use to manipulate pH is acid and bicarb. They also you can use soda ash to manipulate pH. Soda ash will raise your pH. If your alkalinity is in check, but your pH is like super low, you can't explain it, you're gonna want to add the soda ash to it. If you're just like within range, everything's going normal. Like you notice, like, hey, like my my bicarbs, my alkalinity has slipped down to like a 60, and my pH is at like a 6.8. Go ahead and add you some bicarb in there because it's gonna raise the pH and the alkalinity at the same time. Um, and then the acid, the acid, of course, we're gonna lower the pH with the acid. We use muriatic, like I touched on at the beginning of the episode. Basically, it's just really important not to add too much of that acid all at one time. It can damage the plaster if it sits on it. Too much, in my mind, would be more than adding more than like half of a gallon into a 10,000 gallon pool at like one point. Like maybe come back the next day and add another half a gallon if it's like crazy, have like, you know, you got like a 200 alkalinity, like go ahead and add like a half a gallon. Um, and I'm not sure the math, like the math, I guess isn't gonna be exact on this, but when I used to chart out my kind of pools like by hand and I would see how much I put in every week and I was doing math and stuff on it, I was noticing that typically one gallon of acid was dropping a 20,000 gallon pool by 20 points on the alkalinity scale. So that would put it at one gallon, dropping a 10,000 gallon pool by 40 points. Well, basically, it if you do it the way that I do it, you're only gonna be dropping your 10,000 gallon pool by about 20 points per week. So it's gonna be, or like per visit, you know, per dose of acid. Um, there might be a more accurate way, probably if you use the Arenda app or you know, some type of LSI calculator. That'll probably that'll give you a better estimate. We do use the Arenda calculator with the pool brain app. It's programmed in there. I'm pretty sure it's the Renda L SI calculator, but it gives auto dosing for pools based, like, you know, we measure our pools out, take the little measure and stick, wheel it around, whatever. But yeah, usually when it gives me that autodose, it's pretty close to the estimate I've got in my brain. So I consider it pretty accurate, like I'm not the standard, but if for my chemistry, it works for me that way. It's where if I do the math based off of one gallon of acid, dropping a 10,000 gallon pool by 40 points, I usually get consistent results. Also, oh yeah, with the bicarb. With the bicarb, I I don't calculate exactly where my pH is gonna be. And I'm not gonna lie to you about that. I can't estimate exactly where my pH is gonna be based off of how much bicarb I add to the pool. So, like if I if I'm at a 7.4 and I add a pound of bicarb, it's gonna bring my alkalinity to what it brings my alkalinity to. And then I'm gonna, oh buddy, and then I'm gonna assume my pH based off of what that alkalinity projection is, simply. And then soda ash, I really couldn't tell you about soda ash because for how few times I've used it, I'm not that experienced with it. Literally never, I think like one time I've had to put soda ash into a pool, but I never run into the problem of having low out or sorry, regular, like high alkalinity and low pH. Like I just don't even understand how people get that to happen. It's like doesn't make sense to me. I don't get it. Anyway, that's all I had to say. And don't be like my other customers who threw a 50 pounder of soda ash into their pool for no reason. Have a great day. Bye.