White flakes...

[jkatID]

Sorry for another white flakes thread. First time owner of salt pool. My numbers are below. Getting a lot of white flakes from the salt cell. Just bought this house and the salt cell is a year old. I have acid washed it. My pool guy says the plates are bad and need a new salt cell. However it still makes chlorine just fine and I have not seen any other threads attributing white flakes to a bad cell. I have added about 5 gallons of acid to bring the pH and TA down. Any info is much appreciated!

Water temp 80
Chlorine 5
pH 7.4
TA 150
Calcium 320
Cya 75
Salt 3600

 

[mknauss]

Welcome to the forum.
Work your TA down. The flakes should subside when you get it to 80 or so.

 

[mgtfp]

Scaling of the cell plates can get worse once the rare earth metal coating has been worn off.

Don't do any more cleaning of the cell with muriatic acid. Try hosing scale off first or pushing it off with something soft. Next step would be cleaning vinegar. Muriatic acid is quite damaging to the Ruthenium coating.

Try reducing TA as Marty suggested, it should help if the cell is still good.

 

[Chuckiechan]

I clean mine with the same high pressure nozzle on my garden hose that I clean my filter with.

 

[jkatID]

Thanks for the info! I will keep working on the TA and see what happens. Time to fire the pool guy...

 

[jkatID]

Once the water is balanced do I need to vacuum the white flakes to waste to get rid of them? Will they come back through the filter? Thank you

 

[mknauss]

No reason to send to waste. They will just dissolve back into the water.