[Music] one of the most important test factors for your pool water is the ph and the pH is basically just a measurement of how acidic or base the water is and the range of pH is from 0 to 14 with seven being neutral and when you think of items that are acidic you think of lemons and vinegar when you think of items that are base of course you think of baking soda you should check your pH in your pool once a week there are many ways to test for the pH in your pool you have electronic pH meters that you can use to check the pH these are highly accurate and one of the most common ways to test for pH is with phenol red this is an indicator of the pH in your pool and the Taylor k206 and the basic 5way test kit will also give you an AET demand test this will allow you to know how much acid to add to your pool to lower it and the tailor kit also will give you a base demand this will tell how much spacee to add to your [Music] pool doesn't matter how you choose to test for your pH it's important to test for it at least once a week so if your pH is high the lower the ph you want to use maatic acid you can also use a dry acid or PH down there's also alternative metic acid like acid magic with 90% less [Music] fumes if your pH is slow the best way to raise it up is to use borax this will raise the ph without raising the alkalinity you can also use baking soda to raise the ph but this is more for raising the alkalinity you can also use Soda Ash to raise the ph up the only problem with soda ash should also raise the alkalinity [Music] up and one of the reasons why pH is so important it affects how the sanitizer reacts to the water a low pH of 7.2 and 7.4 makes the sanitizer a lot more effective and a higher pH of 8.0 or higher will make the sanitizer less effective which means it takes longer for kill bacteria and the pool surface type definitely affects the pH if you have a plaster pool cement has a pH of 12 or 13 so cement is very base that means that the acid demand and the plaster pool is very high so if you have a fiberglass pool like this one here or a vinyl pool you notice that the acid demand is a lot lower basically the fiberglass pool and vinyl pool is a piece of plastic and for that reason you'll notice that you don't add a lot of muratic acid to your fiberglass or vinyl pool in fact you're going to be adding more base to bring the pH up as it drops so your pool surface type is a number one factor that affects pH in your water there are several ways to sanitize your pool water there are three sanitizers that will affect the pH of your pool and if you use 3-in chlorine tablets to sanitize your pool be aware that these have a low pH of around two so if you use a lot of these tablets in your pool the pH will drop and if you use Cal hypo as your primary sanitizer in your pool note that it has a high pH over 8.0 so if you use a lot of Cal hypo in your pool your page will rise if you use a water generator to sanitize your pool you'll notice that the pH is constantly Rising as it's producing chlorine and that's one of the side effects of the saltwater [Music] generator you also have to be aware that alkalinity and pH are closely tied together alkalinity is a measurement of how alkaline the water is in your pool and basically your pool's alkalinity determines how an acid or a base is absorbed in the water I'll cover alkalinity more in a separate video let's look at pH testing for why your pH may be high or low in your [Music] pool