...If you want your pentair salt cell covered under warranty. A few weeks ago I came back from vacation and found a little bit of algae and a quick test showed no FC in the pool. SLAMed the pool and noticed that the red low salt indicator light was on. I tested the salt level and it was fine. I took the cell out and cleaned it. When I put it back in it showed the salt level was at 4900 ppm. The next day it showed 2350 ppm. It's only 2 years old on a new pool and I had the multiple pentair product 3 year warranty. I called warranty and the guy ran me through a few questions. The last one he asked is if I have phosphates. He said if he sends the warranty company out and even if the cell is dead and there are phosphates in the pool this will turn into a $200 service call I'm on the hook for instead of a warranty claim. So my question to you experts is do I spend countless dollars on jugs of phosphate remover to get pentair to send me a new cell or just cut my losses and buy a new cell or convert to Clorox?
Apparently Phosphates Do Matter...
- Thread starter sgtolv
- Start date
First I'd get a copy of the warranty and see if there is a clause about phosphates. Expecting a pool to have 0 phosphates is insane!
My fill water was fairly high in phosphates, and my PB told me that Pentair would not warranty my cell if I did not remove them. Needless to say, I have been working on removing them for the past couple of weeks. I figured it was worth it since it is a brand new cell, but I thought about it for a while.
More than likely, Pentair will replace just the Flow/Temperature sensor, rather than replace the entire cell. This sensor is what causes most of the salt level indication failures. Costs about $100 on-line.
Jim R.
Jim R.
- May 23, 2015
- 24,381
- Pool Size
- 16000
- Surface
- Plaster
- Chlorine
- Salt Water Generator
- SWG Type
- Pentair Intellichlor IC-60
I believe the current IC manual specs the phosphate levels at <250ppb and the warranty likely states that the water needs to be properly chemically balanced.
Depending on how your phosphates are, it can be cheaper than you think. My phosphates were about 1200ppb in April and for $40 I used 8oz of a 1 quart bottle of SeaKlear phosphate remover and dropped them below 125ppb. The entire process took 2 days as I did a filter tear down at the same time.
A new cell is in the order $800. Is $40 and 2 days work worth that?
Depending on how your phosphates are, it can be cheaper than you think. My phosphates were about 1200ppb in April and for $40 I used 8oz of a 1 quart bottle of SeaKlear phosphate remover and dropped them below 125ppb. The entire process took 2 days as I did a filter tear down at the same time.
A new cell is in the order $800. Is $40 and 2 days work worth that?
- May 23, 2015
- 24,381
- Pool Size
- 16000
- Surface
- Plaster
- Chlorine
- Salt Water Generator
- SWG Type
- Pentair Intellichlor IC-60
Jim's point is well taken though - it could just be the sensor which is indeed super easy to replace yourself and cheap too.
Sgt, what is your phosphate reading, or do you know? I'd second Joyful's suggestion and do a quick treatment before having them out.
Pentair's position on po4 is a bit over reactive, just so you know, but in some cases very high po4 can cause scaling if ph and ch are high enough.
While Hayward also espouses low po4 for cell function, I actually checked on this issue with them before installation and in their case they said it does not void warranty on their aquarite swg...which is self-cleaning via reversal of polarity. Many people on swg use Jacks Magic Purple, which is a phosphonic acid product for swg that over time will break down into po4, and don't have problems with their SWGs so Jim is likely spot on re: what the problem really is
Pentair's position on po4 is a bit over reactive, just so you know, but in some cases very high po4 can cause scaling if ph and ch are high enough.
While Hayward also espouses low po4 for cell function, I actually checked on this issue with them before installation and in their case they said it does not void warranty on their aquarite swg...which is self-cleaning via reversal of polarity. Many people on swg use Jacks Magic Purple, which is a phosphonic acid product for swg that over time will break down into po4, and don't have problems with their SWGs so Jim is likely spot on re: what the problem really is
Thanks for the feedback everyone. I'm going to take a sample to the pool store this weekend to see exactly what the phosphate levels are at.
So I took a sample to the pool store and it showed the phosphate level is around 300 ppb...So now I'm guessing the best route to go is to get the phosphate's under control and hope for a new cell. And as a side note I love taking a water sample in when everything is already balanced. The employee's seem rather annoyed that they can't start pushing products on you. Thank you everyone for your comments.