How to know the SWG needs replacement?

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MoebiusStreet

MoebiusStreet

0
Jan 28, 2014
25
Austin, TX
My SWG - an IC40 - is now in its 6th season. In past years I've been able to keep my FC level where desired by setting it 20% to 40%, depending on various stuff (if that seems low, that's probably because it's oversized for my pool at 11K gallons). When I started up this year I found that I needed to push it up much higher, and for the last several weeks I've needed to keep it at 100% and I'm barely holding at 3ppm with that.

I've checked the NaCl level, and added another 40lbs just in case. I've cleaned the SWG with muriatic acid (and in doing so I saw no visible junk inside, and only a small amount of foaming when I put in the acid).

Since my understanding is that a SWG's average life expectancy is around 5 years, I'm assuming that it's just time to replace it. Should I just get another IC40 and swap it in?
 
The IC40 gives you the Check Cell light when it fails. If you have green lights it is generating fine.

Increased chlorine consumption is the first sign of algae in the water. Do a Overnight Chlorine Loss Test and see if your water passes.

What do you test your salt level with?

Check how many hours are on your cell.

Pentair Intellichlor ICXX SWG - Further Reading

www.troublefreepool.com www.troublefreepool.com

How to Determine the Intellichlor Cell Usage
Pressing and holding the “More” button launches the System Status Mode. When the lights finish scrolling, the percent lights indicate hours of usage in 1,000s. For example, if the 40% light lights, that indicates 4,000 hours.
 
Moe,

Another factor is run time and your CYA level...

If you let your CYA get really low, the sun will quickly consume your FC.. And the amount of FC your cell makes is directly related to your pump run time..

So... How long do you run your cell/pump and what is your current CYA level???

Thanks,

Jim R.
 
The cell reports 20%, i.e., 2,000 hours. This is clearly incorrect. I run the pump 10-12 hours per day all year, temperature permitting, so it should be doing that many hours every year, and this is it's 6th year so I should be well over 10K hours. (also, I went on to the temperature sensor test, and it responded with all lights flashing, i.e., temperature sensor failure).

The water appearance has never been less than crystal, which has maybe lulled me into complacency. On the other hand, this year I have seen a couple small green patches on the mortar around the waterfall stone (I assumed this was a result of low chlorine production rather than an excessive consumer of correct chlorine). Anyway, as a result, I don't have fresh reagents for the FAS-DPD test.

My CYA level is *always* around 20-30. It seems not to matter how much stuff I add, it's always at that level as I measure and as measure by Leslie (yeah, I know). At least twice I've added the amount of conditioner the calculator told me, and it doesn't budge the measurement at all. Since everything was running well, I stopped worrying about it.

Since I don't have the chemicals now for a proper test, but I do have plenty of bleach on hand, I decided to just do a SLAM now anyway, and express-order new test reagents in the meantime.
 
Cell usage is the time actually generating. Not your pump runtime. If you run the pump for 20% for 10 hours a day you only use 2 hours of SWG usage time.

CYA 20-30 is way too low for Texas. You should be ay 70-80. But only raise your CYA to 30 until you complete the SLAM Process.

Get new reagents and then follow the SLAM Process.
 
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Moe,

One of the major issues with having a SWCG is that it will lull you into a sense of complacency.. Everything "looks" OK, so it must be OK, which is just not true.. Even if things appear to be OK, you still have to routinely test and confirm what your chemical levels are.. Maybe you don't need to test as often, but not testing will lead you down the path to an algae bloom before you realize what is going on..

I suspect that is where you are right now.. ?

Thanks,

Jim R.
 
MoebiusStreet said:
Assuming that the SLAM returns my FC levels to normal, is the failed temperature sensor anything I should worry about? I'm happy to save the money if the only complication is that I need to manually set it back to 0% over the winter.
Click to expand...

With a failed temperature sensor the cell defaults to 77F for its salinity temperature adjustment.

As long as you measure the salt ppm with a test kit like the K-1766 Taylor Salt Test and keep it around 3600 ppm you should be fine.
 
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