High TA with normal PH in salt water system pool

[Roger]

We are new at this!! We have a pebble tec pool with a salt water system. The TA is high at 180 and chlorine is showing at 0. Other checmicals and PH show normal on test strip. This been consistent for about 2 weeks.
Solutions from pool services seem to be inconsistent at best. Help please...Roger

[chem geek]

If you aren't registering any Free Chlorine (FC) then either the saltwater chlorine generator (SWG) is broken or not turned on or you have something consuming the chlorine faster than it can be added -- such as a nascent algae bloom. Since you have high Total Alkalinity (TA) yet your pool's pH isn't rising (and I assume the pool is uncovered), then I suspect your SWG isn't working. Normally with an SWG, the pH tends to rise and this problem is most extreme at higher TA.

I'd suggest you get some chlorinating liquid or 6% unscented bleach and add it to the pool and see if the FC registers. HOWEVER, you may actually have HIGH chlorine levels since > 10 ppm FC will bleach out most test strips as well as DPD chlorine tests.

You can learn more about managing an SWG pool here. Also, get yourself a good test kit -- test strips are not accurate for some parameters. You want to get a FAS-DPD chlorine test. I suggest you get either the Taylor K-2006 kit you can get at a good online price here or the TF100 from tftestkits.com here with the latter kit having 36% more volume of reagents so is less expensive "per test".

Richard