No More Salt Water Chlorine Generator -- What's the Right Salt Concentration?

[zipzit]

Well, I've finally had just enough of the tempermental salt water chlorine generator system. Too fickle, too many failures, lots of expensive repairs. I think the weather in Las Vegas is just too hot for that stuff. When the generator cell went out again (after just 24 months) that was the last straw. I'm giving up. Waste of time and money.

We've gone over to chlorine tablets in a floater for maintaining the chlorine level in the pool. Seems way more reliable.

The current salt level in the pool is around 3100ppm. What I don't know is:
-- What's nirvana salt level for a chlorine tablet maintained pool?
-- Any adverse issue of having this salt concentration?
--What actions would you take on this salt concentration? (drain pool? do nothing? Add chemical XYZ ?)

Many thanks,
Zip
Las Vegas NV

 

[elwood58]

This should be really interesting to watch. Stand by for incoming instructions.

 

[jblizzle]

The salt level does not matter in your pool then. I would just leave it alone and the concentration will slowly lower due to water replacement after backwashing or the rare rain storm.

BUT ... I disagree with the decision you made. Abandoning the SWG is fine, but switching to tablets is a HORRIBLE idea ... especially in your climate.

I suggest you spend some time reading in Pool School? Start with these:
ABCs of Water Chemistry
Recommended Pool Chemicals
How to Chlorinate Your Pool

 

[JasonLion]

As jblizzle suggested, when you stop using the SWG you simply stop adding salt and don't worry about the salt level. The salt won't hurt anything and will slowly come down on it's own.

 

[zipzit]

Jason, Jason, Elwood:
Wow, thanks for the quick response and Jason, thank you for the link on chemicals and pool water quality indicators. I love this sentence about using the tablets...

They are incredibly convenient and incredibly insidious.

Message received loud and clear. What's a surprise is everyone here swears by them.

Again, thanks.

 

[jblizzle]

No problem. After I posted that I started thinking that I may have come off a little rude, glad you did not take it that way

So as you may have now realized, the only methods we typically recommend are SWG or bleach.
Now if Florida with massive amounts of rain, the trichlor tablets can often be used without a problem ... but that is a very different climate than you and I are in

 

[bulldogz400]

Those tablets aren't cheap, either! I wonder how much you'll spend in tablets over the course of 24 months.

I'm also Las Vegas - what salt cell do/did you have?

 

[bobodaclown]

Living in Central Florida, pucks got my CYA over 100 by the prior owner. Pucks cause issues here also. Yes we do get more showers and have to drain more often, but they still cause havoc.

As a side note everything was pretty much dialed in, and last night we got 2 inches of rain. Had to drain down to day. I'll test at the end of the week.

 

[jblizzle]

OK, so maybe FL was not a good example since the pools are open year round. Somewhere that gets a lot of rain AND does a partial drain to close for the winter ... OR somewhere with a very short season before a partial drain may get by using trichlor tablets exclusively.

 

[Kiss4aFrog]

Previous owner did up here in Wisconsin. Plenty of rain, short swim season and drain to close for winter. The perfect storm !!!

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And swore by algaecide !! They were just so wrong on so many levels.