Water Softener + Salt Water Chlorine Generator

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dnico33

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Jun 3, 2011
13
After about an hour of searching, I couldn't find anything similar to my problem so please help. This is the first summer for my pool, and the salt level in the water was originally set at 3000 PPM by my pool service to work in conjunction with the Hayward SWCG last September. Everything was ok until recently. One of the several problems that's come up is that my salt level is up to 4300. And since I'm sure the salt fairy hasn't been visiting my yard, I've come to conclude the Water Softener is causing the sodium level to go up since it is connected to the autofill. So before I drain and replace, I want to know suggestions on how to get around this. My builder told me that the autofill ran direct from the street, but when I checked recently, the main into the house goes right into the filter and softener units. He's out of the picture since I fired him for other issues, so his lie does not surprise me. The way I see it there are three ways to remedy this, and I'll list them in order of desirability:

1) Install some kind of low cost sodium filter at the autofill
2) Replace my salt based water softener with a low cost descaler (also called a conditioner)
3) Get this re-plumbed somehow to send the pre-softened water directly to the autofill.

A trip to Leslie's for testing of the water showed 600 PPM, and the gal there said there is no filter of this type, but the girl behind the counter looked about 11 and I would not trust her expertise. The descaling options which consist of wrapping wire around the pipe seem good, but there are a lot of naysayers saying science does not support manufacturers claims, and I don't want my house water to suffer just to correct the autofill. And a re-plumb seems like it could be pretty costly. It would require splitting the line and running pipe an additional approx 200 feet to meet the autofill. And I don't even know if that's legal.

Or could something funny be going on and the 600 PPM water not be enough to bring the 12,000 gallon pool up 1200 PPM in 10 months? Please help, and thanks in advance.
 
^^^^^^^^^^^ What he said.

If you took a pool with 10000 gallons of 3500ppm salt and let 1000 gallons evaporate and then refilled it with 1000 gallons of 600ppm salt - you've added 60ppm to the 10,000 gallons ( I think ). So over time if you replace another 1000 gallons and another and another the salt would build up. However for 1200ppm gain it seems like (unless I mistake the math) that you'd need to add about 2x your initial water volume due to evaporation.

Someone check my math...
 
If you like the water that comes out of the water softener then I'd go with re-plumbing. Assuming you have all copper pipes, the feed pipe would be cut and then a T would be soldered in. At that point a long piece of Pex tubing can easily be run to the plumbing that feeds your pool and attached to the T. Assuming this is all in an unfinished basement, it shouldn't take that long. It's worth getting a quote.
 
Vegas....you definitley have evaporation issues. I wouldn't even bother with any type of R/O or desalinization. The volume of water you need is just too great and it would be too costly. But you never know. There are a lot of experts lurking.

Anyway, I would just get it plumbed right so you don't have to worry about it. In Vegas the autofill is more of a necessity than a convenience. You said the pipes are PVC. Is this newer construction? They are probably PEX which which will make it a little bit more of a challenge.

Is your irrigation water supplied with soft or street (or neither)? Anyway, could you tap into a irrigation supply line and reroute the autofill? Just a thought.
 
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