I moved in to my house about 2 months ago, the pool sat being untreated for about a month, then without the pump running for about a week and a half. Since getting everything back up and running in end of April, I've been struggling to get the water balanced properly.
The chlorine had been too high (slowly dropping from about 7 to a little over 5) over the course of a few weeks, despite having to first add water to the pool a few times due to evaporation then lots of rain. Also the pH has been too high. I add the recommended levels of acid, but when I test a couple of days later, it's still too high.
At one point the salt level had been reading low so I added more salt. The salt level was dropping rapidly (several hundred overnight, when there'd been no rain, stabilizer level is within the normal range- don't know the number at the moment) so I was wondering if there might be a problem with the salt cell. I took a sample to the pool store, their salt reading was about 1000 more than the salt cell was reading (2700 vs 3700 I think). It had just been cleaned in acid a couple of weeks before this, and I'd cleaned it out again with water but it made no difference so I took the SWG to the store. They hooked it up to their machine and tested it 2x and it failed both times. Within the next few days, the salt level reading went up (from about 2700 to about 3000 I think). I purchased a new SWG since it had failed and the readings kept changing, hooked the new one up, and the salt level it was reading didn't change.
I replaced the cell about a week ago, I've been out of town for a few days and when I got home, it was reading at 2600. I did a test with salt strips tonight and they read about 3500. This reading of 3500 makes sense with the pool store's reading of 3700 a few weeks ago because it's rained a lot since then. I have checked the instant reading but that too says 2600. I have a AquaLogic and tried looking around (online, checking settings, reading the manual) to see if there's a calibration option but from it doesn't appear there is, just the ability to reset the avg to the instant reading. Since that's wrong too that's not going to help. Still having problems with the pH, the chlorine was low last week so I increased the chlorination % and today the chlorine is too high again. I've lowered that again and hopefully it will even out.
Soo.... all this brings me to my questions
1) why is my brand-new SWG (hayward t-cell 15) reading so far off the actual salt level, and how do I fix it?
2) why can't I get my pH down? Would the salt cell reading wrong affect this?
The chlorine had been too high (slowly dropping from about 7 to a little over 5) over the course of a few weeks, despite having to first add water to the pool a few times due to evaporation then lots of rain. Also the pH has been too high. I add the recommended levels of acid, but when I test a couple of days later, it's still too high.
At one point the salt level had been reading low so I added more salt. The salt level was dropping rapidly (several hundred overnight, when there'd been no rain, stabilizer level is within the normal range- don't know the number at the moment) so I was wondering if there might be a problem with the salt cell. I took a sample to the pool store, their salt reading was about 1000 more than the salt cell was reading (2700 vs 3700 I think). It had just been cleaned in acid a couple of weeks before this, and I'd cleaned it out again with water but it made no difference so I took the SWG to the store. They hooked it up to their machine and tested it 2x and it failed both times. Within the next few days, the salt level reading went up (from about 2700 to about 3000 I think). I purchased a new SWG since it had failed and the readings kept changing, hooked the new one up, and the salt level it was reading didn't change.
I replaced the cell about a week ago, I've been out of town for a few days and when I got home, it was reading at 2600. I did a test with salt strips tonight and they read about 3500. This reading of 3500 makes sense with the pool store's reading of 3700 a few weeks ago because it's rained a lot since then. I have checked the instant reading but that too says 2600. I have a AquaLogic and tried looking around (online, checking settings, reading the manual) to see if there's a calibration option but from it doesn't appear there is, just the ability to reset the avg to the instant reading. Since that's wrong too that's not going to help. Still having problems with the pH, the chlorine was low last week so I increased the chlorination % and today the chlorine is too high again. I've lowered that again and hopefully it will even out.
Soo.... all this brings me to my questions
1) why is my brand-new SWG (hayward t-cell 15) reading so far off the actual salt level, and how do I fix it?
2) why can't I get my pH down? Would the salt cell reading wrong affect this?