The topic has been beaten to death... industry "pros" generally have bad things to say about salt pools. My take is that they are not well-informed, they are sensationalistic, and want to sell you very expensive and borderline silly things like UV and other magic sanitizers because they can make a ton of money on them.
We've all heard the arguments about how corrosive the salt is and damages this and that and everything, and we all know the counterpoints of proper salt levels are very low PPM and should be relatively benign.
Well, my decking was totally redone 4 years ago and already has some significant cracking. Some is bond beam cracking, some appears to be from a tree root (and I will be addressing the tree root before repairing the deck).
*HOWEVER* -- I have now had 3 different decking companies tell me that "we're just now starting to learn the long-term effects of salt pools now that some of the earlier ones have been in service for 15-20 years" and they have ALL said that the Registrar of Contractors has issued revisions based on concrete workmanship warranties when it's a salt pool, and the reasoning they give is that no deck/concrete company can be held responsible for more than 1 year for concrete work on salt pools because apparently what they claim they're learning is that over time, the salt water is "softening" the concrete and causing more issues with failure and cracking. The decking contractors have even gone so far as to say it's reducing the life of pebble and plaster surfaces because they're concrete based, and will eventually compromise the pool shell in a similar way.
Now, I'm neither a chemist nor a concrete guy, so I don't how much validity to afford to claims like this.
Is this a thing? Can salt "soften" cured concrete and cause permanent damage? Or is this more fear-mongering by an industry that wants to sell me snake oil, only now they've managed to get the ROC to parrot misinformation?
We've all heard the arguments about how corrosive the salt is and damages this and that and everything, and we all know the counterpoints of proper salt levels are very low PPM and should be relatively benign.
Well, my decking was totally redone 4 years ago and already has some significant cracking. Some is bond beam cracking, some appears to be from a tree root (and I will be addressing the tree root before repairing the deck).
*HOWEVER* -- I have now had 3 different decking companies tell me that "we're just now starting to learn the long-term effects of salt pools now that some of the earlier ones have been in service for 15-20 years" and they have ALL said that the Registrar of Contractors has issued revisions based on concrete workmanship warranties when it's a salt pool, and the reasoning they give is that no deck/concrete company can be held responsible for more than 1 year for concrete work on salt pools because apparently what they claim they're learning is that over time, the salt water is "softening" the concrete and causing more issues with failure and cracking. The decking contractors have even gone so far as to say it's reducing the life of pebble and plaster surfaces because they're concrete based, and will eventually compromise the pool shell in a similar way.
Now, I'm neither a chemist nor a concrete guy, so I don't how much validity to afford to claims like this.
Is this a thing? Can salt "soften" cured concrete and cause permanent damage? Or is this more fear-mongering by an industry that wants to sell me snake oil, only now they've managed to get the ROC to parrot misinformation?