Hello,

My name is Steve and I live in Montgomery tx. My family and I have decided to build or first pool so I'm going to be reading alot of posts. My first question is... Salt or traditional chlorine pool. Thanks for any advise Steve.

Welcome to TFP!

Salt and liquid chlorine are both good choices. Personal I greatly favor salt and would never go back to liquid chlorine. But many people here prefer liquid chlorine, so my opinion is hardly universal.

What type of pool and deck are you thinking about?

Well that's a good question? We like the pavers the best but they just break the budget (1800 sq. Ft of decking.) so we are still deciding on cheaper option.

As far as chlorine. The builder I like the best wants to use an ozone system with an automatic chlorine system. Sorry I don't remember the name of it. I totally had my mind set on salt but he has about talked me out of it. I'm worried about damaging all the decking an the coping on the pool. I have not received the bid back from him yet so ill put the equipment list on here for you experts to check it out for me:) sorry for my ignorance I have never owned a pool before.

Others can talk about ozone.

I have an automatic chlorine system, it uses 3" tablets of trichlor. In our area, this adds so much CYA to the pool that you will be forced to either dump water and refill regularly to control CYA levels or you will have to use liquid chlorine instead. In my pool, for example, one 8 oz tablet of trichlor gives about one day's chlorine consumption and adds 1.4 ppm of CYA. In 2 weeks that gets the CYA from the bottom of the acceptable range of 30 ppm to the top of the range at 50 ppm. Then what? Dump and replace 40% of the pool???? In this drought? No thanks, water bill was $300 last time around, it gets expensive at the higher consumption levels.

Liquid chlorine can be automated or you can use jugs of bleach (I do this). Look in to the automated systems but I doubt any builder is well prepared for that around here. Using bleach means that you must tend to the pool every other day at the outside, daily is much better. So, you must have a pool tending person for vacations.

Personally, if my pool did not have such soft rocks all around, I'd switch to SWG. I think that would let me tend the pool every week instead of every other day but truly, skimmers and water level needs to be checked every other day anyhow. My pool is surrounded with moss rock type boulders as coping (somewhat below the water line) and in the huge waterfall. Let me warn you, they decay pretty easily. And rocks within 6" of the water is a nightmare with calcium stains and algae. I am certain that salt would make the rock decay worse, it is already pretty bad since the sandstone is so soft to begin with. If the sealing had been maintained for the first few years, maybe it would not be so bad now but I have to get the calcium off before I can seal it. I don't know about decking issues with the salt, I'd guess that it matters how much splash you get and whether the decking is washed by sprinklers or manually on occasion.

Thank you so much for your response. Your info Is very helpfull. I'm really glad I found this site it has been very informative. Sounds like the way to go is the swg whith the proper materials around the pool. I'm an airline pilot and fly three days a week so hopefully I'll be able to manage this! Thanks again steve

If it's a a residential (low bather-load) outdoor pool exposed to sunlight, then ozone is not necessary and most likely would be too undersized anyway. Ozone is most useful in spas used every day or two or other high bather-load situations. Otherwise, the ozone just ends up consuming more chlorine ending up costing more.

Thanks. Ya we live near Houston and the pool will be exposed to the sun for most of the afternoon. Steve