Puck chlorination without adding CYA/CH?

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UltraIntex

UltraIntex

0
Sep 7, 2012
63
Australia
I often have to leave my pool unattended for a week or 10 days. I have an Intex SWG filter pump with a
timer which is daily and wont turn back on the SWG in the event of power outage (regular occurrence).
My question is, is there a slow release puck type product on the market which wont add CYA or CH to the pool?
 
Even if there were a non-CYA or non-CH puck option, I would advise against using different forms of chlorine in a feeder - even if the feeder was empty and you were to refill it with pucks of a different chlorine type than what had been used previously.

I have only found pucks containing either CYA (by far the most common) or CH. Both products are sold as a form of "pool chlorine" and most pool owners would not expect them to be incompatible with each other. However, they are very incompatible, especially when solid forms of different chlorine types come in contact in an enclosed feeder or similar enclosure. This ought to hammer the point home: http://www.chemaxx.com/pool_chemical_explosion2.htm Spoiler alert: Make sure your sound is on and hold on to something sturdy at the 6-second mark of this video.

May want to do a search on the Liquidator which is a device that dispenses liquid chlorine into the pool and see if this might be an option for you.
 
Bama Rambler said:
Your best bet would be to get a small UPS and put the pump/swg on it. That will work as long as you don't have frequent and/or lengthy power outages.
Click to expand...

Great idea, that would work well because most of the outages last only a few seconds, which is enough to turn off the timer and leave the pump on constant without the SWG.
I think on later models available in the US, Intex fixed this problem.
 
Any idea of a suitable rating for the UPS; they seem to be in VA and or Watts?
The pump draws 1.5amp and the SWG likewise, and if the unit is in standby when the outage occurs then its just the timer to consider.
We are 240v 50Hz
 
UltraIntex said:
Any idea of a suitable rating for the UPS; they seem to be in VA and or Watts?
The pump draws 1.5amp and the SWG likewise, and if the unit is in standby when the outage occurs then its just the timer to consider.
We are 240v 50Hz
Click to expand...
VA is just what it sounds like volts x amps. 240v * 3a = 720VA but you need some head room plus the start-up may take extra.

How long do you want to be able to run the pump from the battery?

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UnderWaterVanya said:
VA is just what it sounds like volts x amps. 240v * 3a = 720VA but you need some head room plus the start-up may take extra.

How long do you want to be able to run the pump from the battery?
Click to expand...

Our outages are either very short or very long ie either a few seconds/up to 10mins or a few hours, but mostly very short, so I can only really prepare for the short ones.
So say, up to 10 minutes.
Eaton, Belkin, APC and Cyberpower seem to be some brands I have found so far.


Intex manual says filter pump is 450W
 
Would this be suitable? It says run time @ 200W is 15 minutes so I assume it would last me about 7 minutes.
http://www.digitalyes.com.au/prodView.a ... duct=57093
Do these things have to be plugged into a computer to work or can they be standalone for any appliance as I see they have software to be loaded into a computer?
It has a transfer time of 4-6ms; is this short enough to ensure the timer dosen't switch off, as computers unlike pumps have a delay apparently:

"A typical transfer time is between 2 ms and 10 ms depending on the amount of time it takes to detect the lost utility voltage and turn on the DC-AC inverter. During this time the power to the load is momentarily interrupted. That's why listing such devices as "uninterruptible" is somewhat misleading. Your equipment's internal PSU should have hold up ("ride through") time greater than UPS transfer time to avoid data loss. For a reference, SMPS PSU for personal computers are required to provide at least 16 ms hold-up time at rated load (this number corresponds to one cycle of 60Hz input). Therefore most PCs are not affected by a transition from mains to UPS."
http://www.smps.us/uninterruptible-power-supply.html
 
The best of course is a full online UPS, but those are pretty expensive. With a transfer time of 6ms your timer on the pump/swg should ride through fine.

That unit may work but I'd opt for the 1400VA unit. It's only a little more and you'd have enough time to ride through most outages.
 

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No need for software - useful for a computer, can tell the operating system to shut down as power reserves dwindle.

The only way to verify your device can take the power blip is to test it.

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If I upped my CYA to say 60 or 70 and ensured my FC was up around 5 when I went away, given an average summer temp of around 75 to 80f and say my power was interrupted on the second day I was away without having a UPS, roughly how many days without chlorination, would my pool stay within a safe FC level?
 
It has more to do with the amount of sunlight hitting the pool than anything else. The loss of chlorine from the UV in sunlight is independent of temperature. Most pools at the recommended FC/CYA levels lose around 2 ppm FC per day. If you only set the FC near the minimum required level, you won't go more than one day before going too low. Now algae doesn't grow instantly, but it would start growing and consume the rest of the chlorine faster so after another day or two the water would show evidence of algae, either dull/cloudy or visible green algae. How fast things go bad depends on the nutrient level in the pool.

If you shock the pool to an FC that is 40% of the CYA level, then with a 30% per day loss that may occur at the 60-70 ppm CYA level, the FC would drop to the minimum 7.5% of the CYA level after 4-5 days. Basically, shocking a pool can let you go for somewhat less than a week and some people do this successfully. You couldn't go for 2 weeks this way, however.
 
UnderWaterVanya said:
If you add a cover you can drastically decrease losses.
Click to expand...
yes I have one and I keep it on at all times except when swimming.
If find my losses quite small even with a CYA of 40 hence my wondering how long I could go without chlorination.
But its not worth the risk if algae starts to grow with such small drops in FC.
 
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