SWG and Pool surfaces

[swreeder70]

Greetings everyone,

We are coming up on four years of owning our new home and pool that was installed at the time of the build. When we built, our pool builder was old school and did not believe in SWG. He stated that the salt was corrosive to the surfaces of our pool. Our pool has a limestone rock waterfall around 2/3rds of the pool and the coping is built with blue lueder which is a form of soft limestone.

At the time, I did not push back on the builder as my plan was to start with liquid chlorine. We have been running that system now, but I'm getting increasingly tired of lugging all the jugs of chlorine and disposing of the empty jugs. So I'm thinking SWG may be the way to go.

Wanted to get the forums consensus is the amount of salt added to the pool going to be harmful or detrimental to our limestone waterfalls, boulders and coping?

 

[Bosley]

Swreeder, I am gonna let others with more knowledge than me answer that but in the meantime, could you tell me about those stripped loungers you have? They look super comfy!!

 

[mknauss]

Have you tested the salinity of the water you have now? You might be surprised ...............

No proof we have seen of a pool with a SWCG having any stone issues beyond those you have with any water, especially flagstone.

 

[swreeder70]

Swreeder, I am gonna let others with more knowledge than me answer that but in the meantime, could you tell me about those stripped loungers you have? They look super comfy!!

Those are big joe pool floats. We've been very happy with them. Picked them up at Sams club and have two seasons into them so far. Sams club prices are much lower than direct from big joe: Big Joe Pool Floats

 

[jimim]

Those floats r awesome. We have 2 and last year added the foot rests with the cup holders in them. I like the foot rests. They were a nice addition.

 

[jimim]

Your pool is awesome btw. Forgot to mention that. I really really like the stone work. Very cool!

 

[swreeder70]

FWIW I'm still not sold on the need for SWG, just exploring the possibility. Our pool runs like a clock, only need to run the pump 8 hours a day and I have a liquidator to feed chlorine into the system. Aside from the hassle of 1 gallon jugs to deal with there really is nothing wrong with our setup.

 

[mknauss]

If what you are doing works, by all means stick with it!

 

[swreeder70]

Really the bigger problem with this pool is all the aeration the water gets from the stone waterfall all the way around, plus the spill overs keeps it in a constant battle to hold the PH down.

 

[mknauss]

You have an automation system. Don't run them all the time. Program them to only run a couple times a day for 30 minutes or so to keep them chlorinated.

 

[swreeder70]

We only run the falls two 15 minute periods per day, unless we are using the pool. The spillovers from the spa however run whenever the pool is turning water. We consume about a gallon of acid per week to keep PH in check.

 

[JoyfulNoise]

Yep, your builder was certainly old school - he put a single speed pump on your pool returns (Whisperflo) and used a variable speed for the waterfalls. He could have saved you a ton of money in electrical costs by using a properly sized waterfall pump for the water features and the Intelliflo VSP on the pool. That’s a classic mistake PBs make when they don’t understand the hydraulics involved.

How does water get into your spa from the pool? Is there a single return on the spa that is on the same side of the return plumbing as the pool returns OR is water being routed to the spa jets? There should be a way to automate your spa spillover as well so that you can cut down on the aeration. A picture of your equipment pad would help.

To your question about salt - Texas limestones can be very soft and susceptible to salt damage. There’s no way to know beforehand BUT if you’ve been using liquid chlorine your pool likely had over a 1000ppm of salt in it already. So raising it up to 3200ppm, may not be a big deal.

 

[swreeder70]

JoyfulNoise, appreciate your input. Here is what things look like.

 

[Poolmama!]

Love your pool! What color Pebble Sheen is that?

 

[swreeder70]

Love your pool! What color Pebble Sheen is that?

The deck is Desert Gold and the rest of the pool is slate blue with the abalone mix added in.

 

[Jimrahbe]

70,

If you want to shut off the spa spillover, just turn the make up valve off. To keep your spa water fresh you could just set up the Spillway function on your EasyTouch and run it twice a day for 30 minutes or less...

Your make up line runs into your spa return plumbing just above your check valve.

Thanks,

Jim R.

 

[JoyfulNoise]

As Jim said, you can only setup a “spillway” function to run everyday (pump suction to pool and pump return to spa) with that spa makeup valve turned off. Unfortunately your builder used a lot of those blue handled Hayward shutoff valves instead of Jandy valves and so adding additional automation using a black Compool valve actuator is not an option unless you some cutting and replumbing of the PVC. In my pool, the spa make up is a separate eyeball wall return in my spa (not a jet) and it’s on its own Jandy valve so I was able to automate it without using the canned spillway feature circuit. It avoids needlessly aerating my spa water since it doesn’t use the jets.

Either way, you need to cut down on aeration to keep your pH better in line. Adding borates to your water is another option to hold down pH rise but they are of limited use in a manually chlorinated pool (borates are more beneficial in SWG pools).

 

[swreeder70]

Thanks for all the advice. Looks like my SWG project might be changing to a valve/automation upgrade.