It's advisable to add about 20 ounces of borax for every 5,000 gallons of water in your pool. This amount will help increase the pH by approximately 0.5.
After the first application of borax is dissolved, add the rest of the acid, followed by the rest of the borax. Brush again, and then keep the pump running for 24 to 48 hours. After 48 hours, test the water's pH and add more acid if necessary to bring the pH down to the correct level.
Borax can:
Increase the pH of your pool water if things have gotten too acidic. Act as a buffer for your pH, protecting your sanitizer levels. Prevent algae and bacteria growth (because your sanitizer is happy)
A rule of thumb is 1.5 lbs. of baking soda per 10,000 gallons of water will raise alkalinity by about 10 ppm. If your pool's pH tested below 7.2, add 3-4 pounds of baking soda. If you're new to adding pool chemicals, start by adding only one-half or three-fourths of the recommended amount.
Use 20 Mule Team Borax which is quality borate to raise the pH without affecting the TA and see if pH will be stable. If you get too much borate, drain and refill 1/3 to 1/4 of your Pool Water and use pH increaser instead of borate. You can lower both pH and TA using Muriatic acid If they get off the balance.
If your pool has good circulation, then 30 minutes would be more than adequate to be safe.
To bring down pH, use a made-for-pools chemical additive called pH reducer (or pH minus). The main active ingredients in pH reducers are either muriatic acid or sodium bisulfate (also called dry acid). Reducers are readily available at pool supply stores, home improvement centers and online.
Use Aeration to Raise Pool pH
Looking to raise pH without affecting Total Alkalinity? You can sometimes raise the pH through aerating the pool water. Yep, just add air! It's the same reason hot tubs and spas often suffer from high pH issues.
Algae can raise the pH. Adding strong liquid chlorine, calcium or lithium hypochlorite chlorine may raise it. Suddenly heating the water, whether from a pool heater or a string of sunny days, could up the pH.
Low pH water will cause etching and deterioration of plaster, grout, stone, concrete and tiling. Any vinyl surfaces will also become brittle, which increases risk of cracks and tears. All of these dissolved minerals will hold in the solution of your pool water; which can result in staining and cloudy pool water.
Install a Distilled Water System
This is especially helpful if your area has naturally hard water, or more alkaline water. Distilled water has a neutral pH of 7, so a distilled water system will be able to pump in distilled water to naturally lower the pH in your pool without forcing you to use chemicals.
Borax is the sodium tetraborate decahydrate (Na2B4O7 · 10H2O) that, when dissolved in water, is hydrolyzed to boric acid and OH− anions, yielding a pH of about 9.13.
Adding 76 oz or 4.75 lbs of boric acid per 10,000 gallons of water will provide 10 ppm of borate. Boric acid is a weak acid and has a pH of 3.8-4.8. It will not lower pool water pH by much. Most of the time the pH drop is only about 0.2 for a 50 ppm dose.
Note: do not let your alkalinity down so low that it makes your LSI go below -0.30. This is only to be done with enough calcium hardness to offset the lower alkalinity level. The point is, if left alone, swimming pools naturally rise in pH. It's just physics, and it will continue to happen.
Can you swim in a pool with high pH? Definitely, but know that chlorine in the water may not be as effective as it normally would and you may be exposing yourself to harmful microorganisms. Besides, the water can also turn cloudy and your pool sides may scale due to alkaline water.
There is no thing you can add to the water to raise pH without raising alkalinity, that would be impossible chemistry-wise. The only thing you can do is try to remove the acid (CO2) that's building up. The best thing to do would be to ignore it.
Soda Ash or Baking Soda? If you want to raise your pH and alkalinity together, use soda ash (sodium carbonate). If your goal is to raise alkalinity only, use baking soda (sodium bicarbonate).
Alkalinity is the total alkaline material in your pool water. You should test alkalinity first because it will buffer pH. Your reading should be in the range of 80 to 120 parts per million (ppm).
Unlike the carbonate compounds, borax prevents the pH from fluctuating without increasing the total alkalinity of the water. It also protects against algae growth by maintaining the pH at a constant level, allowing the chlorine to sanitize the water effectively.
Boric acid is made from the same chemical compound as borax and even looks like it. But while borax is commonly used in cleaning, boric acid is mainly used as a pesticide. Boric acid kills insects by targeting their stomachs and nervous systems.
In general, due to a relatively high pKa, boric acid has limited dissociation at neutral or low pH values. Being a weak acid, the actual pKa value of boric acid (and distribution of boric acid and borate ion) essentially varies depending on pH, ionic strength, and temperature of the feed solution.
Boric acid is created from the mixture of borax with other naturally occurring minerals such as boracite and colemanite. Basically, the addition of hydrogen or another acid to borax creates the compound boric acid or hydrogen borate (H3BO3).
Borax in water forms an ion called the borate ion. When the borax solution is added to the glue solution, the borate ions help link the long polymer molecules to each other so they cannot move and flow as easily.
Answer and Explanation: When 40 mL of the borax solution is added to 40 mL of water, the pH of the solution will increase making it basic.