Building first pool in Austin, Tx. SWG or Chlorine?

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sfawley

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Jan 6, 2013
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Hey guys,

We have just started the process of getting a pool built at our home in Austin. I went into the initial meeting with our builder with the assumption that we would go with a SWG. The builder was pretty adamant about going with Chlorine as opposed to a SWG due to how destructive the salt can be. I have talked to a lot of friends and 90% of them say a SWG is the only way to go. Needless to say...I am very torn on what is the right thing to do here.

All this being said...IF we end up going with salt is there anything we need to be aware of with regards to the make, model, functionality, etc. of the SWG and/or the other pool components? From what I have read it sounds like we definitely want to avoid flagstone. Anything else that would be considered a "must have" or an "avoid at all costs"?

Also...the same questions IF we end up going with Chlorine.

Thanks for any advice that you can provide!

Scott
 
Avoid any stone from Texas or Oklahoma or Anywhere around us =). Saltwater will ruin it unless you seal it with a very good sealer. The other problems you might have are corrosion to metal that is within 10 feet of the pool. If you use stone around a saltwater pool seal it. I use DuPont Stonetech Professional Salt Water Resistant Sealer and you can plan on getting about 3 years out of it even though it says 5 on the bottle. Good Luck.
 
I have a SWG pool and I love it. But, my pool builder designed it as a salt pool. The deck is concrete with an acrylic textured surface. Instead of a separate coping the deck just extends about 1 1/2" beyond the edge of the pool. No natural stone anywhere. Seven years in service and no problems, just normal maintence.

Just be sure that if you want a SWG pool, you plan it as one right from the beginning. No stone features. No limestone or travertine coping. No flagstone or other stone decking. A good pool builder should know what to avoid.
 
chiefwej said:
I have a SWG pool and I love it. But, my pool builder designed it as a salt pool. The deck is concrete with an acrylic textured surface. Instead of a separate coping the deck just extends about 1 1/2" beyond the edge of the pool. No natural stone anywhere. Seven years in service and no problems, just normal maintence.

Just be sure that if you want a SWG pool, you plan it as one right from the beginning. No stone features. No limestone or travertine coping. No flagstone or other stone decking. A good pool builder should know what to avoid.
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I have customers that even after telling them all the horror stories still want flagstone with a swg. They don't believe that it will really deteriorate or just don't care. So even if you have a good pool builder it doesn't matter. The homeowner makes the ultimate decision based on the knowledge they receive.
 
Yes, concrete(cantilever) or a man made stone like artistic pavers. They are a good alternative to natural stone. Also with the concrete you still have to be sure that the pool builder knows how to pour cantilever correctly. The cantilever needs to be tied to the deck but have a slip barrier between it and the pool beam(tar paper). Also if you do cantilever make sure the rebar is not too close to the forms of the cantilever because it will start to rust through with the swg.
 
My pool is surrounded by 1950's era clay tile. No problems at all.

pool2.jpg
 

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Michellef said:
So what did you choose? We are in the Dallas area making the same decisions and same scenario with pool builder. What stone and what system ?
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We went with a SWG and sealed Oklahoma flagstone. It will be a little more work to reseal it each year but the effort is worth it to us since we love the look of the flagstone.
 
i JUST ( as in 30 min ago) added salt to my pool... I am converting from chlorine (10% bleach added daily)... I am no longer worried about the corrosion. The chlorine its self is WAY more corrosive than the salt could ever hope to be... Just leave a wrench in the vicinity of your chlorine bucket if you don't believe me.

I am a bit worried about my flagstone, but I have some sealer on the way and plan to re seal it every year or two or as needed... I guess worse case I rip it up and go with something new. I am really excited to get the whole system up and running and be done with adding bleach!
 
We built a SWG pool that we had for 7 years before moving to our current house in which we use chlorine. In the current pool, I added a Stenner pump with a 30-gallon tank. We have limestone as the coping and as the pool decking, so a SWG was not an option.

My observations:
* The SWG is definitely easier than filling up a tank with 20-30 gallons of bleach each month.
* However, the SWG is not maintenance free. It causes PH to rise at a higher rate than without. It was harder to "dial in" than the Stenner pump. With the pump, I can very easily figure out how much bleach I am putting in the pool. With my SWG, I could only specify how often the cell would turn on from 0-100%. So, if you adjusted your run time, you had to pay attention to whether the SWG needed adjustment.
* I definitely had some corrosion with my SWG and all of my hardscape was concrete (carved and colored to look like stone). With the current pool, there is a slight amount of corrosion in a few pieces of the limestone after 10 years (we've only been here for 2).
 

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