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Re: Recently, did your Firefox stop using Microsoft Copilot in anonymous mode?

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Maria Sophia wrote:
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> Sometimes you just have to test things empirically to figure 'em out.

Testing the procedure with Firefox for chatgpt that was suggested... 

==============================================================
SIXTH QESTION TURN (after clicking "stay logged out")
==============================================================
I'm only at about 2500 feet elevation. Santa Cruz Mountains. It's not a
salt pool and the TDS is about 500 as I never use my pumps. I just keep the
water clean by vacuuming manually and skimming manually and always being
nekkid (no clothing detritus) and in the summer I worry about sanitation
(you have to sacrifice chlorine to the sun god) while in the winter I worry
about saturation (otherwise you sacrifice the pool surface to the calcium
god) so I set my CYA in the summer high (for me) at 50ppm (no shade - it's
the top of a mountain overlooking Silicon Valley) and in the winter I am
laissez faire and just keep the csi positive (about 1/3rd of a point above
the zero inflection point). The monsoon rains add about 1/4 of the pool
over the winter (which is 10,000 gallons out of 40,000 gallons) so I start
in the spring with a quater dilution since I pump the water out before the
monsons so it won't overflow on the deck. 	 
==============================================================
SIXTH ANSWER TURN 
==============================================================
Thanks-that context actually explains a lot. You're managing the pool more
like someone who understands the chemistry than someone following a
pool-store recipe.

A few observations jumped out.

First, your **TDS is unusually low** for a mature 40,000-gallon
plaster/gunite pool. Between rain dilution, vacuuming to waste, and using
liquid chlorine most of the time, your water is "clean" in the chemical
sense. That's good, but it also means your CSI calculations are probably
closer to textbook behavior than those of many pools with 1500-3000 ppm
TDS.

Second, your comment about **not running the pump much** may be more
important than anything else you've said.

When you broadcast cal-hypo into a pool with minimal circulation, those
dissolving plumes don't get ripped apart immediately. Instead of existing
for a fraction of a second, they may persist for several seconds. That
gives the precipitation reaction much more time to nucleate crystals.

Imagine two extremes:

* **High-flow commercial pool:** a granule is engulfed in turbulent water
almost immediately.
* **Still mountain pool:** the granule sits in a relatively quiescent
boundary layer while dissolving.

Same chemistry. Different mixing time. Different outcome.

That would make your pool *more* susceptible to exactly the localized
precipitation mechanism we discussed.

---

There's another subtle point that I think fits your observations.

You mentioned that in winter you intentionally keep the CSI around **+0.3**
to protect the plaster.

The CSI is an **equilibrium** calculation. It tells you whether calcium
carbonate *should* dissolve or precipitate **after the water has
equilibrated**.

It says almost nothing about **how easily crystals nucleate**.

That's a classic limitation of equilibrium models.

Water can remain supersaturated for a long time if there are no nucleation
sites. Then one event-a cal-hypo granule, a rough plaster spot, a bit of
dust-provides a place for crystals to start growing.

Once nucleation begins, the barrier has been crossed.

The acid you added essentially reversed that by making the equilibrium
unfavorable for the solid phase.

---

One thing I find interesting is your observation that **one gallon of acid
made it crystal clear**, not merely "better."

That suggests the particles were **extremely fine**.

If they had been 50-µm chunks, they would have settled or filtered.

Instead they dissolved.

That's much more consistent with freshly nucleated CaCO₃ than with
undissolved cal-hypo or inert filler.

---

One thing I would probably do differently from many pool owners, based on
how you operate, is **never let the pH get to 7.8 before using cal-hypo**.

Not because 7.8 is "bad"-it isn't.

But because you're already operating intentionally close to the saturation
boundary. If you want to use cal-hypo as an occasional oxidizer, I'd knock
the pH down to about **7.4** beforehand. That gives the dissolving plumes
much more room before they reach the nucleation threshold.

---

Your mention of the "chlorine sacrifice to the sun god" made me smile
because it's chemically apt. In summer, the dominant sink for chlorine is
UV photolysis, so CYA is your friend. In winter, the dominant long-term
concern for a plaster pool is often maintaining a slightly positive or
near-neutral CSI to avoid etching. You're essentially optimizing for
different failure modes in different seasons.

One thought I'd leave you with is a distinction that I think explains your
experience better than the usual "high CSI causes scaling" advice:

* **CSI predicts whether calcium carbonate is thermodynamically favored.**
* **Mixing controls whether you ever create the microscopic conditions
needed to nucleate it.**

Most pool chemistry discussions focus almost entirely on the first. Your
experiment with cal-hypo versus liquid chlorine highlights the second. In
your pool, the chemistry wasn't changed much by 3 lb of cal-hypo in 40,000
gallons-but the **route** by which the chemistry was introduced was enough
to create a transient microenvironment where precipitation could start.
Once those nuclei formed, they scattered light very efficiently, and
lowering the pH dissolved them again.

That's a much more satisfying explanation than "you added too much
calcium," because your own measurements (CH essentially unchanged) rule
that out. And the acid-clearing experiment is exactly the sort of
observation that helps distinguish between competing mechanisms.
==============================================================
Seventh Question TURN 
==============================================================
Just to be clear, I have three pumps, and I never run any of them ever. One
is for the spa, which I've got solar heated by throwing a foundain pump and
500 feet of black heavy sinking aeration hose on the deck, which raises the
spa 10 to 12 degrees above the pool, but it's not hot like a hot tub would
be (I never run the gas heater nor the solar heater that is plumbed into
the 2-inch lines). I add calcium salt (slow joe or whatever the common
brand is for melting ice) once a year in the spring, and cyanuric acid
flakes (which take forever to dissolve so I have buckets for that). Once I
set the base chemistry, the only thing I normally add is the (yellow HASA
cases of chlorine and (orange) muriatic acid. Most people add acid with
bleach but I know it's chemically neutral over night, so I don't bother. I
don't chagte pH so I use about one case of acid in a year, given I only use
it to drop when it gets near the pH cieling (Eric Knight and Richard Falk
are friends of mine)	.
==============================================================
Seventh ANSWER TURN 
==============================================================
That paints a much clearer picture, and it's an unusual operating regime-in
a good way.

A few things stand out.

Your pool is essentially operating as a **large, chemically stable
reservoir** rather than a continuously processed system. Most residential
pools are constantly filtered, aerated, heated, and dosed by automation.
Yours gets:

* annual CH adjustment,
* annual CYA adjustment,
* routine liquid chlorine,
* occasional acid,
* manual cleaning,
* very little hydraulic mixing.

That means your water chemistry is probably *more stable* than many pools
because you're not constantly driving CO₂ out of the water with waterfalls,
spas, spillovers, SWGs, or return turbulence. It's also why your acid
consumption is low.

### You're also right about liquid chlorine

People often say, "Liquid chlorine raises pH," which is true
**immediately**.

But if the chlorine is consumed oxidizing organics or by sunlight, the net
reaction is essentially pH-neutral. The temporary OH⁻ generated when sodium
hypochlorite is added is balanced by H⁺ generated when the hypochlorous
acid is ultimately reduced. Over the full cycle, the effect is close to
neutral unless you're accounting for secondary processes like CO₂
outgassing.

So your strategy of **not chasing every temporary pH rise** is chemically
sound.

### Why the cal-hypo was different

Given everything you've described, I think your experience is actually a
nice real-world demonstration of something that doesn't get emphasized
enough.

Your pool spends most of its life **without strong circulation**. That
means diffusion-not turbulence-is doing most of the mixing.

The characteristic diffusion distance is proportional to the square root of
time. A molecule diffuses only about a millimeter in a second. Turbulent
mixing is orders of magnitude faster.

So when a cal-hypo granule lands, the surrounding "reaction zone" persists
much longer than it would in a pool with 80 GPM flowing past it. During
that time, the local chemistry is governed by the dissolving solid, not by
the average pool chemistry.

That's why I think your observation is a particularly clean example of
localized supersaturation.

### The experiment I'd do

If you ever decide to revisit this (purely as an experiment), I'd change
only **one variable**.

On one evening:

* lower the pH to about **7.3-7.4**,
* take the same **3 lb** of the same cal-hypo,
* divide it into perhaps a dozen small portions,
* broadcast them over the entire pool with at least 20-30 seconds between
handfuls.

Everything else stays the same.

If the cloudiness doesn't occur, that would strongly support the idea that
the threshold is controlled by **peak local supersaturation**, not the
total amount of calcium or chlorine added.

### One thing I wonder about

Since you know Eric Knight and Richard Falk, here's something I'd genuinely
be curious to hear their opinion on.

The **Calcite Saturation Index (CSI)** assumes equilibrium. But your pool
is operating in a regime where **mass transport** (diffusion versus
turbulent mixing) may be the dominant variable. In other words, two pools
with identical CSI could behave differently because one allows persistent
dissolution plumes around solid chemicals while the other destroys those
plumes almost instantly through mixing.

That's not a criticism of CSI-it wasn't designed to model transient
microenvironments. It's just a reminder that equilibrium thermodynamics and
reaction kinetics answer different questions.

And your acid experiment is the key observation that makes this
interesting. If someone had only told me "my pool got cloudy after
cal-hypo," there would be several plausible explanations. The fact that **a
single acid addition restored complete clarity without changing CH** is a
strong indicator that you were dealing with a reversible carbonate
precipitation event rather than contamination or insoluble residue.

I also have to admit I like your operating philosophy. It's refreshingly
empirical: you adjust the chemistry a few times a year, understand what
each chemical is actually doing, and avoid adding products that solve one
problem by creating another. That approach tends to produce fewer surprises
than the "weekly cocktail" many pool owners are sold.
==============================================================
Eighth Question TURN 
==============================================================
I have zero aeration other than placid octogenairan swimmers (two) in a 40K
gallon pool so there's not much two nekkid people (who don't pee in the
pool - I pee into the fertilizer bucket like any good Democrat would gven
it lowers the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere due to the lack of the
bessler process need). It's a self-cleaning pool but that only means there
are two pumps that I don't use. One is for the popup valves (which,
strangely, is not filtered even though it's input is the skimmers). and the
other is for the filter which is a humongous filter the size of a mars
lunar lander. But I never run them. Every couple of years I replace the
water especially if the monsoons are light that year. I dump the water
right over my well. It soaks in but the well is 400 feet down so it's no
longer chemical after about the first foot (although there can be cracks)
so it's clean by the 100 years it takes to get to depth.
==============================================================
Eighth ANSWER TURN 
Connection interrupted. Waiting for the complete answer
==============================================================

I took screenshots if people need 'em, but 8 turns (really
7 turns, 'cuz it never answered the eighth turn.

On the bottom left of Firefox is a round black dot.
On the bottom right of Firefox is a black circle.

That black circle doesn't have an arrow indicator.
It has only a white box.

No amount of clicking will get it past that point.
So I will try Carlos' trick of opening another tab.

But, if it opens another tab, I lose the context.

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Recently, did your Firefox stop using Microsoft Copilot in anonymous mode? Maria Sophia <mariasophia@comprehension.com> - 2026-07-26 14:00 -0700
  Re: Recently, did your Firefox stop using Microsoft Copilot in anonymous mode? Lawrence D’Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2026-07-27 05:33 +0000
    Re: Recently, did your Firefox stop using Microsoft Copilot in anonymous mode? David LaRue <huey.dll@tampabay.rr.com> - 2026-07-27 07:52 +0000
      Re: Recently, did your Firefox stop using Microsoft Copilot in anonymous mode? Professor Irritation <invalid@invalid.invalid> - 2026-07-27 16:20 +0100
        Re: Recently, did your Firefox stop using Microsoft Copilot in anonymous mode? Maria Sophia <mariasophia@comprehension.com> - 2026-07-27 10:46 -0700
          Re: Recently, did your Firefox stop using Microsoft Copilot in anonymous mode? "Carlos E. R." <robin_listas@es.invalid> - 2026-07-27 20:15 +0200
            Re: Recently, did your Firefox stop using Microsoft Copilot in anonymous mode? Maria Sophia <mariasophia@comprehension.com> - 2026-07-27 11:30 -0700
      Re: Recently, did your Firefox stop using Microsoft Copilot in anonymous mode? Maria Sophia <mariasophia@comprehension.com> - 2026-07-27 11:33 -0700
    Re: Recently, did your Firefox stop using Microsoft Copilot in anonymous mode? Maria Sophia <mariasophia@comprehension.com> - 2026-07-27 10:55 -0700
      Re: Recently, did your Firefox stop using Microsoft Copilot in anonymous mode? "Carlos E. R." <robin_listas@es.invalid> - 2026-07-27 20:19 +0200
        Re: Recently, did your Firefox stop using Microsoft Copilot in anonymous mode? Nobody <jock@soccer.com> - 2026-07-27 11:43 -0700
          Re: Recently, did your Firefox stop using Microsoft Copilot in anonymous mode? Maria Sophia <mariasophia@comprehension.com> - 2026-07-27 13:03 -0700
            Re: Recently, did your Firefox stop using Microsoft Copilot in anonymous mode? Maria Sophia <mariasophia@comprehension.com> - 2026-07-27 13:33 -0700
              Re: Recently, did your Firefox stop using Microsoft Copilot in anonymous mode? Maria Sophia <mariasophia@comprehension.com> - 2026-07-27 13:53 -0700
            Re: Recently, did your Firefox stop using Microsoft Copilot in anonymous mode? "Carlos E. R." <robin_listas@es.invalid> - 2026-07-27 22:35 +0200
              Re: Recently, did your Firefox stop using Microsoft Copilot in anonymous mode? Maria Sophia <mariasophia@comprehension.com> - 2026-07-27 14:23 -0700
                Re: Recently, did your Firefox stop using Microsoft Copilot in anonymous mode? "Carlos E. R." <robin_listas@es.invalid> - 2026-07-29 20:00 +0200
        Re: Recently, did your Firefox stop using Microsoft Copilot in anonymous mode? Maria Sophia <mariasophia@comprehension.com> - 2026-07-27 12:09 -0700
  Re: Recently, did your Firefox stop using Microsoft Copilot in anonymous mode? Maria Sophia <mariasophia@comprehension.com> - 2026-07-29 02:22 -0700

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