Intellichem malfunction?

[vbehrens]

Hi,
I was wondering if Intellichem has safety mechanism to avoid accidental release of more chlorine (using SWG) or muriatic acid?

Thank you,
Vanessa

 

[JasonLion]

Welcome to TFP!

While I don't know exactly what safety mechanisms they use, they do certainly have at least two layers of protection against over dosing. In a system like that one the primary layer of protection is always that the maximum dosage rate isn't really all that high, so even when it fails on maximum feed rate, there should be time for you to notice that something is going on before any permanent damage is done. There is also always at least one addition layer beyond that, typically including things like disabling the acid feed if the PH is not observed to change in response to acid feed over some longish period of time.

Note, we don't recommend ORP based chlorine regulation, such as used by the Intellichem, and several similar product from other manufacturers, for use with a residential pool. ORP is simply not reliable enough to be suitable for use with consumer systems, though it does have it's uses in commercial systems with professional oversight.

 

[vbehrens]

Welcome to TFP!

While I don't know exactly what safety mechanisms they use, they do certainly have at least two layers of protection against over dosing. In a system like that one the primary layer of protection is always that the maximum dosage rate isn't really all that high, so even when it fails on maximum feed rate, there should be time for you to notice that something is going on before any permanent damage is done. There is also always at least one addition layer beyond that, typically including things like disabling the acid feed if the PH is not observed to change in response to acid feed over some longish period of time.

Note, we don't recommend ORP based chlorine regulation, such as used by the Intellichem, and several similar product from other manufacturers, for use with a residential pool. ORP is simply not reliable enough to be suitable for use with consumer systems, though it does have it's uses in commercial systems with professional oversight.

Thank you for the welcome!

Thanks for the information on the layers of safety mechanisms.
What other systems do you recommend for automation instead of the ORP based chlorine regulation? We were thinking of buying the Easytouch, intellichlor and intelliChem. However if the ORP isn't recommended, then the intellichlor or the intellichem might not be the best options. Perhaps just measure the levels with the strips which gives ppm levels (for the free chlorine)?

Thank you.

 

[JasonLion]

For chlorine, simple percentage based control, standard on nearly all SWGs, is more than sufficient for outdoor residential pools. You need to test FC and fine tune the percentage once in a while, but once you have things running smoothly that only has to happen once a week, or even every other week.