Salty taste in water, but no SWG

[rhythm]

I'm curious about the salty taste we have in our pool water. We do not have a SWG. A few years after the pool was built, we noticed that the water had started to taste just a little salty, and in the 4th year it started to get more noticeable. We drained and replaced a lot of the water, and the taste was gone. Now it's a few years later, and last Summer the taste was back and I'm sure it will be more noticeable this Summer. My question: Would this be due to the fact that I use liquid chlorine almost exclusively for sanitizing the pool? I know there's sodium in liquid chlorine, so I've been assuming that this is what's causing it. But on the other hand, I don't think I've ever heard anyone else make this complaint/observation about using liquid chlorine, so I'm wondering if there might be another issue that I'm not aware of that's causing this.

If it is the liquid chlorine, I know that there's the cal-hypo form of chlorine available, but our water is very hard so I didn't want to be adding more calcium to the water.

Thanks,
Greg

 

[n240sxguy]

I've read on here a couple times where people going to switch from liquid chlorine to a swg found that they had accumulated over 1000ppm of salt in their water from using the liquid chlorine. Get a salt test and see where you're at.


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[ping]

It most likely is salt from the chlorine that has risen to where you can taste it. You could have a pool store test the level, but it is sure to not be at a level that is corrosive to the pool. Many people add salt to around 2000 ppm for the feel of the salt even though they do not have a SWG. Most SWG's require 3000-4000 ppm of salt.

Usually in SoCal the calcium level gets too high and the water needs to be replaced before any other levels get out of whack for pools that use liquid chlorine.

All of the forms of chlorine add some salt to the water, liquid just adds a little more than the others. The other forms will add calcium or CYA and salt which will get the water in trouble much sooner than liquid chlorine will.

 

[Divin Dave]

Yes, liquid chlorine is Sodium Hypochlorite, (sodium is the salt). Over time, some amount of salt will accumulate in the pool if using liquid chlorine. However its rare to see acumulations above about 1500ppm which may be enough to have a slight salty taste. It takes quite a bit of time for that level to be reached and the salt level is usually kept a bit low due to dilution primarily by rain...

THere is no harm though in having salt in the water, but if its objectionable, then the only good solution is to dilute the water (partial drain and refil).

 

[chem geek]

Cal-Hypo wouldn't help that much anyway since the calcium also has a salty taste though it tends to be more bitter. Sodium has the strongest salty taste effect, but other ions such as potassium also taste salty (just not as much).