I purchased a Hayward Turbocell S325, along with their new panel about 6 months ago.

I started receiving an error message that says "Invalid Cell" when all the settings and equipment is securely plugged in (at least from sight).

Recently my store replaced the cell entirely, and it still reads "Invalid Cell" after a factory reset of the panel and resetting the cell.

Any ideas?

What causes large air bubbles to shoot out of the returns? Happens each morning at start-up. Lasts for about 10 seconds.

NOTE
- The unions connecting our heater
are cracked and leak, especially on start-up. Have “mended” with tape but surely they aren’t water tight. Need to get those fixed, and plan to.
- Our main drain was shut off when it was discovered our drain is not in compliance with safety code. This means our water feature (3 sheer descents) cannot work because water must flow through the main drain for the feature to work. Consequently, our water feature wall has been sitting inoperable since 3/31/23. Yes, we plan on and are trying to get the drain fixed.

Could the leaking unions and water feature sitting unused cause air to build up overnight?

I searched and I can’t find a thread where anyone else has seen this error
Any ideas? The local company that does service for Hayward wants to charge me 1400 for a new main board

Hi,

So as the title states...I've been using TFP for knowledge and troubleshooting for years and finally decided to join and hopefully share some of my knowledge that I've learned.

I've had an old school inground cement pool with the mechanical/electrical timer wheel for 15 years in Las Vegas, NV and we moved to a new house in the same area about 2 years ago with an inground fiberglass saltwater pool with full Pentair system integration/automation.

I look forward to "chatting" with you.

Thanks,

John

See attached pictures.

I had these for a while, still there after SLAM. I have put a crushed vitamin C on top of one, but stain remained.

Ideas? next steps?

Greatly appreciate the help of this forum!

I know this is an old thread...but I came across it while searching for a similar problem that I was having. I will be posting a new thread and a link to a walk-through video to help others. In my case the cell was reporting low and/or very low salt (900 ppm) and therefore not generating chlorine (proper operation) but in fact, I had a high salt condition (> 4000 ppm) which was confirmed by multiple tests performed with different methods (strips, test kit, electric wand sensor, and pool store). My flow switch was operating properly as well as the built in thermistor. It turned out that the cell had excessive buildup on the plates and either blocked the flow of water around the two salt sensor "fangs" or somehow altered the reading. After the factory recommended muriatic acid cleaning procedure the cell properly read the salt level and then started producing chlorine.

Hope this helps the next person who comes across this thread, and be on the look out for my video walk-through.

Thanks,

John

Hello,

I bought a Aquabot Rapids 2500 from refurbpoolbots the end of March. Recently have been having an issue: When I start it up, it runs for about 3-4 minutes and then stops. The controller light starts blinking. I disconnect it and press the button again to restart it - it again runs for 2-3 minutes and stops - again the light is blinking. The button on the aqua controller blinks and have to press it several times to restart the cleaning cycle and it then works for the 2.5 hrs clean cycle.
Reached out to support - they asked to try running without filters...same issue. Now they want me to send it to a distributor (did not provide a shipping label)...any ideas if I can fix it myself (can it be an aqua controller issue)...any help will be greatly appreciated

I have two operation questions about SWGs and just wanted to get some options.

1. I have a Pentair Intellichlore I60

2. The system always indicates a much lower salt concentration than my TF Test Kit drop test. This morning the SWG was reporting around 3200 ppm and the last drop test was around 3900. Is it better to keep the salt level around the test kit level for optimum range or bring it up based on the SWG. I was not sure if it better to operate on the higher or lower end of salt.

3. I prob have my SWG % set a little low and have just been making up the chlorine by adding liquid on the weekends. Do most people try to hit it right on with the SWG? I was worried about overshooting and then getting too much chlorine in the pool and this allows me to manually balance each week.

yet another basket question. Upgraded the pump to 3/4 hp. I have an coleman 26x12 pool with the 2 filter ports. When the intex basket is hooked up and the other filter port is open the skimmer basket on the pump side is full. When I plug up the other filter hole, of course the suction on the intex basket is better but the skimmer basket on the pump side doesn't fill to the top, it just keeps trying to fill with water. To me, this doesn't seem right, Any help is definitely appreciated, These are all using 1.5 inch hoses, however, using B size adapter for the filter sides.
TIA

I am a new pool owner and have bought a Dolphin Proteus DX4 pool cleaner that "cleans" walls and waterline. It does climb up on walls but randomly and gets may be 5% of the wall surface in its 2 hour run. Is that enough if vacuuming twice or thrice a week? Are all other vacuums behave the same way or are there better cleaners? I was expecting it to get much more of the the wall surface with each run.

thanks

At my swimming pool I keep having problems with the (Sugar Valley) peristaltic pump for the PH-min (sulphuric acid solution). Because the pool is located lower than the technical room, the pipes empty when the filter pump is off. With the negative pressure that is created, the sulfuric acid is sucked in when the peristaltic pump is stopped in certain positions. Replacing the rotor and peristaltic tube had no effect.

Has anyone maybe dealt with this problem and knows a solution? Or could a magnetic pump be the solution (do they completely close, even at negative pressure)?

Thanks for the help!

Quick question, I lowered my water level to WASTE yesterday and when I returned the value to filter ,some DE got in pool. Why did this happen and how can I avoid in future? I am filtering brushing and vacuuming ,but I want my water TFP clear again! Thank you in advance.

Hello everyone, my name is Kevin. We are previous owners of an aboveground pool who relied on pool store testing and advice. We've been pool-less for approximately 6 years and are "diving" back in. We are going with an Intex 16'x32' with a salt water generator and an in-wall skimmer. Just now starting the ground leveling and pad process. Looking forward to connecting with this forum to gain knowledge of proper pool chemistry and maintenance and all around fellowship. I'll try to post pictures of our progression through setup to splash down.

Hi all. My name is Kara and I’m trying to do a better job problem solving so everything doesn’t always fall on my husband. I’m happy to find this great site!

Hello,

First time pool owner and my first post, just had a pool renovated and we selected Quartz Scape Aruba Sky as our finish, we noticed a few small (size of pencil eraser) dark spots on our tanning ledge, I tried a little muriatic acid and even a pumice stone to remove the spots, so far neither of my ideas worked, was hoping someone could offer a solution to remove the spot

Thank you VERY MUCH

Hi everyone. I have a pool that for years gave me no issues. 3 years ago I switched to salt. year 1 no issue, last year water started to get green/brown and could not get rid of it. pool guy said is metal in water. this year I had similar problems, not to the extend of last year but still not clear. dark stains in liner and steps. they suggested to test the water faucet to see if any metal was present. no metal there. I bought a metal collector tool that since i put in skimmer helped a bit. water looks decent but stains are still there. the only thing i can think of is the heater (its 5 years old). pool guy has no solution just says that in NJ he sees many pools with this issue. but water has no metal in it.....i really dont know what to do. replacing heat exchanger for a non copper one is expensive and maybe that is not the problem. any suggestions? thank you

looking to get some opinion about a pool issue

We’ve been using our hot tub successfully through the Pentair app for 3 years now, but recently we will set it for a temperature between 101 and 103 and unless it is turned off, it will keep heating, recently reaching between 105 and 111. Is there maybe a setting that has been changed? Thanks in advance for your help!

New pool owner here with a bunch of questions. The pool is a ~25,000-gallon inground pool. I went to a local pool store and followed their recommendations about two weeks ago. I think misunderstood their directions and added too many trichlor tablets (or maybe they gave me bad advice). Either way, I learned my lesson and want to do things the TFP way.

Here are my most recent test results using the TF-Pro test kit.

CYA - 120
FC - 11.5
CC - 0
PH - 6.8
TA - 80
CH - 250

I know the CYA is high so I guess I need to drain the pool? What is the easiest way to go about doing this? How much should I drain?

Also I know that my pH is low. Should I address this now or wait until after I drain the pool and fix the CYA problem?

Is the pool safe to swim in or should I stay out of it until I get everything into the correct ranges?

Thanks

How do you folks clean your pool tile? I don't have any build up, just some darker spots on the tile and some residue from when they installed the tile (I can easily remove it with my thumb). Does some dishwashing soap like dawn and a stiff (not metal)/soft bristle brush do the trick?

Pool should be done in about 1 week I will be on here a lot

My harward controller reports low salt (2600) and it is I checked it so adding salt. The controller also says high salt/amps.
Ran the diagnostic instant check and the salt is reading 2600 and the amps on the chlorine Gen are at 7.5. Can anyone tell me what I need to do.

Every day it sounds a little bit more the worse for wear. I'm going to run it until the end but I started looking for a replacement this morning. And I was surprised that they don't make the single speed 1.5 HP anymore. Anyone have a recommendation for a replacement that accepts 1.5" connections.

I have a question regarding my ongoing search for a test kit.
I'm not able to buy a complete kit from US, but I can get individual reagents for a reasonable price.
In my cart I have:
K1515A FAS-DPD kit (R-0870, R-0871, R-003)
R-0013 CYA test + test tube. But, the 7+14 ml test bottle, couldn't I replace that with a syringe with ml-markers? We can get those for free at the pharmacy (they go from 0-15 ml) and Amazon wants $8.

Will that be enough to get going? I have Phenol-red tablets for PH already. The reagents for alkalinity and hardness are not available for oversea shipping, but can I do without them?.

I've had new build up for 2 weeks now. I test with the TF-100 kit. I have gotten all levels right on the money. I cannot get my TA to budge. My real question is should I actually worry about it or move on and enjoy my hardworking? I've dropped my PH to 7.2 two different times in attempt to lower TA. 110 is as low as I can get it.

CYA 40
FC 5
Borates 50
PH 7.7
TA 110

Yesterday I had a talk with my sister, who has gotten an interest in TFP, since she's tired of their pool always needing shock and flock....... She then send me a link to a K-2006 kit and told me she had ordered it.
It was from Amazon Germany - but the seller account has a chinese-sounding name. The seller address is in the US, but it says "shipped from China"
My natural sceptisism saw some red lights there........ I never-ever buy branded goods from China, since they are most often counterfeit goods, where the only identical point is the label. No one knows, what they put in stuff........
The price was very similar to what I heard people paid the offical reseller in Spain, but that could very well be intentional from the seller's side.

I asked her to try and cancel the order - don't know if she succeeded - but wouldn't you agree with me?
Or am I just seing ghosts?

We've got a 4th of July party coming up, and it'll be the first time we've used our newly replastered pool.
Levels are looking pretty good- for a 14k gallon pebbletec pool, IC40 salt cell running at like ~20% right now with ~3600 PPM salt.
FC is about 3 PPM-ish, CYA is about 40. pH is a constant battle to keep down, but I'm muriatic-acid-ing every other day.

My question- how important is it to raise the CYA to 70+ immediately? Should I work hard to bump that in the next couple days before the party?
My previous pool guy suggested that I should wait til winter to get the CYA way high, because if I want to use pucks in the winter when the SWG won't work because it's too cold, it'll go up fast then anyway. ( I do realize pucks are a no-no around here, but oh-so-convenient)

At ~40 CYA, my SWG should have no problem maintaining about 3 PPM FC, which is 7.5% of 40. I'm just trying to understand how important it is to go by the TFP CYA recommendations, or if this is one area where I can wing it a bit.
I'd like to keep my chlorine levels low-ish, so as not to irritate skin if possible... or is that a myth?

I have a new construction in ground concrete pool, plastered with NPT minipebble on May 13th. I've brought CYA and chlorine up slowly and I've been brushing consistently (still seeing plaster dust however) and my latests tests are as follows:

CYA: 40
TA: 70
FC: .5-1.5
pH: 7.2-7.5
CH: 100-150

Should I be concerned about the low calcium hardness? Could this be why I'm still getting plaster dust? Should I add calcium carbonate or just wait longer?

I have a SWG that has not been hooked up yet and I have not yet added salt.

Because we have a pool, we've been having my 2.5 year old doing Infant Self Rescue swim lessons. This is the 4th week.

The instructor emailed tonight to cancel for everyone tomorrow, because she went to urgent care because she has some kind of itchy bumpy rash. Wife told me that last week she said she had a bit of a rash at one point too. (Though she was initially attributing that to the rash-guard type shirt she wears. I was already starting to suspect chemistry.)

The pool is an indoor residential pool. (Instructor is renting the time in the pool; she's not the homeowner.)

I've been getting in and participating with my son's lessons last week and this week, and on Tuesday noticed a little itchiness, and also did one day last week. I have also noticed the water is a little murky some days, and some days the combined chlorine smell is pretty strong in the building.

Not at all surprising to me, she told me that the local pool store says that the water is testing fine... I told her I didn't want to just throw them under the bus, but that I wasn't surprised. And I'd bring home a sample on Friday (assuming she's feeling better then and we have lessons then) and run it through my kit.

Just curious what could be so out of whack that would cause a rash? She is in the water for a few hours each day, but I'm pretty sure even that shouldn't cause a rash in a well-balanced pool!

Pool room has some sky lights and lots of windows, but I seem to remember seeing that indoor pools shouldn't have much, if any CYA, right? Edit: I see the comment about a little CYA being necessary to buffer the chlorine. That makes sense.

Hi TFP community. I noticed some spots on my walls. Nothing obvious to the regular bystander, but I am very analytical with my pool. When I brush it, it comes right off. Later on, I notice that it comes back. From what I read, this could be a little mustard algea, although I also read that is rare...especially in the NE where I am in NY. My water is crystal clear, passes the over night test, and has CC of less than .5. Again I will stress that I notice it but most don't or won't.

My readings are attached.

My thoughts are this does not qualify for a SLAM. I would hate to have to drive FC up to 31 and then not be able to use the pool for a while because of the need to wait for it to drop. I get that it is technically safe to swim below shock levels based on CYA chart but I just don't feel comfortable letting people and kids jump in the water with FC levels way above 10.

Any thoughts. Maybe a little Cal Hypo and get it up to 10? Thanks