Hello everyone,
Inaugural post here so please go easy on me... My Pentair IC40 has been working well until here recently. After the winter I added a lot of salt to get back to where I was supposed to be. I watched the salt ppm shoot up as expected and then slowly taper down over a few weeks. It bottomed out around 3100ppm, and then mysteriously has started increasing slowly. Chlorine generation was normal and all was well. I thought it would just go back down on its own. Yesterday I ran a water test and came up with very low chlorine. I checked the salt ppm via my panel, and it showed 3900ppm. Took water sample to Leslies pool and they told me that it was 3100ppm. (less than 20 minutes between sample taking and tesing at leslies) They advised I also add some shock and acid, which I did when I got home. I also acid washed my IC40 thinking that would help. After reassembly and adding the shock and acid, I rechecked the salt ppm and it is reading 4250 ppm. I may be mistaken, but I thought that the only way the number for salt ppm could go up would be addition of salt, or extreme evaporation? After reading more on this forum I also have a sick feeling that the previous owner may have steered me incorrectly on maintenance. He told me to use straight muriatic acid for the acid washes. I read the manual finally and this forum and see that it should be 1 part acid to 5 parts water. The only good thing is that I have only let the acid sit in the cell for less than 5 minutes each time. Have I toasted my cell? Why did it stop chlorine generation if is thought the salt ppm was 3100? How can salt ppm reading increase without addition of salt? My IC40 is version 2.something.
Thank you in advance.
Charles
Inaugural post here so please go easy on me... My Pentair IC40 has been working well until here recently. After the winter I added a lot of salt to get back to where I was supposed to be. I watched the salt ppm shoot up as expected and then slowly taper down over a few weeks. It bottomed out around 3100ppm, and then mysteriously has started increasing slowly. Chlorine generation was normal and all was well. I thought it would just go back down on its own. Yesterday I ran a water test and came up with very low chlorine. I checked the salt ppm via my panel, and it showed 3900ppm. Took water sample to Leslies pool and they told me that it was 3100ppm. (less than 20 minutes between sample taking and tesing at leslies) They advised I also add some shock and acid, which I did when I got home. I also acid washed my IC40 thinking that would help. After reassembly and adding the shock and acid, I rechecked the salt ppm and it is reading 4250 ppm. I may be mistaken, but I thought that the only way the number for salt ppm could go up would be addition of salt, or extreme evaporation? After reading more on this forum I also have a sick feeling that the previous owner may have steered me incorrectly on maintenance. He told me to use straight muriatic acid for the acid washes. I read the manual finally and this forum and see that it should be 1 part acid to 5 parts water. The only good thing is that I have only let the acid sit in the cell for less than 5 minutes each time. Have I toasted my cell? Why did it stop chlorine generation if is thought the salt ppm was 3100? How can salt ppm reading increase without addition of salt? My IC40 is version 2.something.
Thank you in advance.
Charles
