Understanding Adjusted Alkalinity

So I got this call from somebody that I've known quite a bit in this industry, and he was talking about pool store readouts.

Now, I have been an open critic in the past of how some of these pool store softwares will just give recommendations sort of siloed like, oh, your pH is off, so do this.

Sometimes it's selling soda ash to raise the pH, even though you and I know it's going to naturally rise.

But that's not the point.

You know, just fix the pH.

And then here's something for alkalinity.

Fix that.

Without any regard to what it'll do to the pH.

Okay.

And then you've got calcium.

You got to fix that.

And everything was based on range chemistry.

But in this case, this pool store, I'm not going to name names because it's not my business, but this pool store said adjusted alkalinity on there.

And that got him thinking.

And so he reached out to me and said, hey, wait a second.

What is adjusted alkalinity supposed to be used for? Is it supposed to be used for acid dosing? And I realize this is worth talking about because I used to get this question quite a bit.

Of course, at Arenda, we talked about carbon and alkalinity.

By the way, adjusted alkalinity is just another way of saying carbonate alkalinity.

In other words, just bicarbonate and carbonate ions.

And if your pH is below 8.3, it's pretty much just bicarbonate ions.

So that's what adjusted alkalinity is.

And anyway, it's on the test results.

It's on the piece of paper that they print out that your adjusted alkalinity is this, and then it starts making dosing recommendations based on that.

Well, that's a big problem because that's not how you dose acid.

Let me explain why.