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Test results please … Your PoolMath logs show an old CYA value of 50ppm. Is that typical ?

Even the largest residential SWG is going to be undersized for your pool. Your pool, for all intents and purposes, is a commercial sized pool. You’re going to have to look into a Pentair automation system that can run two of their IC-60 cells in parallel.

When the cell is not energized, no power applied, it’s fine. Nothing is happening. When the cell is energized and the water is cold, it creates chlorine gas less efficiently at the expense of other chemical reactions occurring (mainly oxygen gas formation but also some chlorate). You would...

Meh … I let it ride until the water gets too cold. There will be days where it flickers on and off with the sun but I just let it go. Then, after a few weeks of wondering if any chlorine is in the water, I do a test. It’s usually still pretty solid magenta. Then I ignore it some more. Then I...

You rang .. Short answer - energizing the cell, no matter what it produces, wears out the plates. The coating on the cell plates has a finite lifetime no matter what. Slightly longer answer - when the water is cold, chlorine gas production from brine becomes less and less efficient. Oxygen...

FYI - in your pool, every gallon of 10% LC added increases salt by 12ppm and every gallon of 20 Baumé muriatic acid increase salt by roughly 50ppm. So it does add up quickly.

It’s not that high. Typically around here in AZ you’ll get anywhere from 50 to a couple of hundred ppm chloride content in the municipal water system. It’s pretty much on the noise of the salt test. @jonpcar - salinity builds up quickly here in the desert. Pools evaporate a lot of water...

Whoa, your cell lasted 18,177 years!?!?! That's got to be the record, hands down. Those CircuPool SWGs are really impressive ... Let's see @Newdude do some of his magic FC production math and let us know what the return on investment was ... PS - Care to share details on your time-travel...

I prefer a cold DontGive2SheetzAboudit ale myself… comes in a blonde wheat beer too …

The electronics are fine outside as long as they are appropriately mounted. You can always throw a blanket or tarp over the equipment of that helps.

If it’s easy to remove then there’s no problem brining it inside. My SWG stays on the plumbing because our “freezes” are a few hours at best and the freeze protect is always running so it’s no big deal. But if you’d rather have the peace of mind then that’s ok too.

Agreed. You’d need to track about a years worth of data in order to get a good sense of the inflection points. Then you’d have starting points for when to turn up or down the SWG.

3.5 years for a cell is pretty bad. They should last a lot longer than that. Many of us can get well over 5 years out of cell and my last one lasted 8 years. But I have Pentair equipment. Unless your wedded to Hayward, you might consider going with a different equipment manufacturer.

The variable speed pump needs to be powered all the time. The SWG only gets powered when needed to generate chlorine. If you are using an old school mechanical timer then you power the pump by hooking it up to the LINE side of the timer and you hook the SWG power supply up to the LOAD side of...

@JamesW ‘s idea of buying a high quality 10k thermistor and simply splicing it into the wiring (while cutting the wires to the dead one out of the circuit path) makes the most sense. It’s easy to drill a hole into the plumbing and add a saddle clamp to hold it in place. Pentair makes them for...

You can’t short the temp sensor wires if the thermistor is dead but you could possibly fake the board out with a 10k resister soldered to the connection points of the temp sensor wire. This would, however, lead the power supply to believe that your water is always 75°F and so the chlorine...

If you want to “chemically” clean the cell after mechanically blowing out all the larger solids, then cleaning vinegar (6% acetic acid … don’t use Balsamic vinegar, it’s makes the Italians very unhappy …) is a good choice. I would dilute the cleaning solution 1:1 with clean water (tap or...

But … but … but … your PB needed an MIT grad in nuclear physics to set it up correctly because they’re “tricky” and “temperamental” … and stuff.

No offense taken. Honestly had my hopes up that there was a decent resource for OB builds in Tucson. You can still OB a pool here but you’re basically stuck doing all the leg work yourself. Half the battle is just tracking down decent subs that are willing to return a phone call. As we...

Well sorry about that referral. I’ve seen that guys truck all over Tucson and the way it is advertised is that they help OB’s build their pools. The advertising made it sound like they do or help with the design and permitting work and then send you off with a list of subs and help out when...

That’s an absolutely laughable statement. There is nothing “touchy” or “critical” about automation and SWGs. That line is written entirely to make them sound like they “know something” you don’t and that they’re experts and if you “force them” to install an SWG then they’ll need to “bring in...

Hello fellow Tucsonan. I’m curious, who’s the builder? SWGs are perfect in this climate and any kvetching about salt and corrosion and blah, blah, blah, is simply either ignorance on their part OR self-dealing … they want to sell you the UV/ozone because they make more off it and leave you...

If the softener came with the house previously installed, then it’s unlikely there was any provisions made to bring softened water to the outside. In AZ, and pretty much anywhere else that needs water softeners, the household plumbing is split into two feeds. The main line feeds two manifolds...

As long as the relay activating the SWG can be tied to the pump running a specific speed or schedule, then that’s fine. The safest way to operate the SWG is such that the SWG only receives power when the pool pump is running a scheduled speed. The flow switch is a secondary failsafe and should...

I know, I get it. I was just being cheeky … as you say, it’s all BS and semantics. Same stinkin hardware. It’s pretty clear that the online seller, which is nothing more than some rando parts fulfillment service that tacks on the standard middle-man markup but takes no ownership of any...

{pool guy taps on the sticker} “See that there “EC” on the sticker at the end of all them funny numbers?? “ Customer : “Yes” “That there means this comes off the interwebz and you know you can’t trust nuttin’ off them interweeeebz … now looky here, my stuff, it’s all TRADE GRADE stuff...

That top half should not separate. It’s welded shut. If the unit did that then it was previously opened or damaged in some way.

A local pool shop here wanted $250 to replace a defective flow switch on the IntelliChlor. The part itself is available for $50 (and I’m sure they can get it cheaper than I can) and it’s literally a 15min job if you spend lots of time on it. Even if you factor in the trip charge and their...

A local handyman could do the job as it is just cutting and gluing PVC, hanging a control box on the wall and doing some simple electrical wiring (assuming you’re not trying to tie it into an existing automation setup). The only downside is that you get no warranty for the work and you’re...

I’m still reviewing the pictures but I’ll say this - TFP recommends that you have AT LEAST 70ppm CYA when running an SWG. It’s been shown tone and again that pools with SWGs need higher CYA levels.