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Hey everyone, and welcome to pool school where we help keep your pool clean and clear by answering your questions about pool maintenance. My name is Matt and I'm the founder of swimuniversity.com a website that teaches you how to take care of your pool or your hot tub. 

Today's question is, how do I keep the pool pH and alkalinity balanced?

Well, first you need to test the pool water to know where your pH and alkalinity levels currently are. I recommend you use test strips or a liquid test kit, and you can even take a sample of your pool water to your local pool store and have them check it for you. 

Now if your pH and alkalinity are both low, I would start by adjusting just the alkalinity. Use an alkalinity increaser, sort of bump up the reading, and this should also increase your pH reading as well.

Now if your pH and alkalinity are both high, you can either dilute the pool water or use a pH decreaser, and this should decrease both the pH and the alkalinity. 

Now if one reading is high and the other reading is low, you want to increase the reading of the lower one by using either alkalinity increaser or pH increaser. 

Remember when we're handling pool chemicals, we want to wear protective gloves, goggles, and clothes. 

So the ideal range for pH should be between 7.4 and 7.6 and with alkalinity, we want to keep the range between 100 and 150 parts per million.

If your alkalinity and pH are low, this can cause your water to be acidic. Acid is not good in your pool. It will erode and corrode the parts of your pool and your pool filter. 

If your pH and alkalinity are high, this can cause scaling, which can also damage your pool and all your pool filter equipment.

So it's really important that we balance the pH and alkalinity because it also makes your sanitizer more effective.

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That's it, thanks again, and happy swimming.