Trouble determining accurate salt level for Pentair IC-40

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You can buy a standard solution or you can make one by adding 3.2 grams of salt to 1 liter of water for a 3,200 ppm solution.

Taylor R-0868-5K-F (2634 ppm NaCl) (The 5K refers to the conductivity in microsiemens)(The last letter indicates the solution size. F means 32 oz).

Hayward GLX-CAL-SOL (3,200 ppm NaCl)
 
Pentair sent tech out last week. He inspected the cell and said it looked perfect. He said the low salt readings were due to too much salt in the pool. He recommended draining and replacing pool water.

I asked if I could just let the SWG continue working in order to bring the salt level down to a point where the SWG reads more closely to the actual salt level. He said that would work. Needless to say I was a little skeptical.

So now it has been a little over a week. My Taylor test kit now shows 4200 and the SWG indicates low salt and 2400 ppm. Pool temp is 79. At what point should I expect the SWG to read more accurately.
 
High salt won't cause the salt to read low. Seems like a salt sensor failure. Recontact Pentair for warranty.

Can you describe the exact test procedure you're using including the reagent numbers?.

Did the service person do a salt test? If yes, what type of test and what was the result?
 
I have 2 Taylor sodium chloride test kits, numbered k-1766. I fill the clear test jar to the 10mm mark and then add one drop of the bottle marked R-0630. Swirl it a bit and then I add one drop at a time of R-0718 swirling after each drop. When the solution turns salmon color, I stop. The I multiply the number of drops of R-0718 x 200 to get my total ppm. I have 2 test kits and they both test the same. Tech just said I had high salt, but didn't tell me the level. Should have asked him.
 
I contacted Pentair again. They looked at the previous work order and were surprised that the service company did not replace the flow sensor. They wrote up another service order tag that specified replacing the flow sensor. The Pentair tech said that a high salt level will not cause a low salt reading. I followed up with the pool service company. They are coming out this week.
 
The flow sensor contains the temperature sensor. That's the only reason that I can think of that they would want to replace the flow sensor. The temperature sensor does fail periodically. When the temperature sensor fails, the system defaults to a 77 f reference temperature to determine salinity. Since your water temperature is close to 77 f, a failed temperature sensor should not have a large effect on the salinity reading.

I don't think that the flow sensor is the problem. However, if that's what they want to do, it can't hurt to try it.

Note: Very low flow through a cell or excessive air in the water can affect the salinity reading. Make sure that you have good flow and no air in the system. If the flow switch was activating at too low of a flow rate, that could affect the salinity reading. If you're running the pump at too low of an rpm, that could affect the salinity. See the thread below.

Salt PPM decreases with Pump at lower RPM.
 

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I have been following this thread because my one year old pool also has an abnormally low IC40 salt reading. It has never been within a 1000 ppm of the Taylor test kit reading. This year it seemed to be getting worse. The cell was reading 3,000 ppm and actual salt reading was about 4,800 ppm.

I called the PB and he sent out a warranty tech who immediately replaced the Flow Switch, which apparently is also the salt/conductivity sensor. Salt reading from the SWG is now over 4, 350 much closer than before.

Jim R.
 
James,

If that is true, then we have a puzzle. After replacing the flow switch the temperature reading on the Screen Logic display was the same, but the salt reading went from 3050 to 4350.. Any idea why that would be?

Jim R.

Edit.. Ok, I went outside and looked and it is definitely a temperature sensor feeding back into the IC40 itself. Obviously Screen Logic is getting its temperature from the temp probe in the plumbing.. So, I guess the IC40 produces faulty salt readings if its own temp sensor is going bad.
 
If the temperature sensor fails and the software knows that it has failed, it will default to a reference temperature of 77 f. This will affect the salinity reading depending on how far the water temperature is from 77f.

However, if the sensor is giving inaccurate temperatures, the calculated salinity will be wrong depending on how far the water temperature is from the sensor reading.

The cell temperature is not displayed.

If you look into the cell, you can see the conductivity sensor probes.
 
Pool repair tech came out yesterday. We both tested the salinity with a Taylor test kit. Test kits showed 3600-3800 ppm. Screenlogic shows 3650 ppm. Water temp is 79. No errors in the system. Everything was working fine so no repair/replacement.

This morning I received a Pentair Alarm System Notification indicating that my salt level is below 2400 and that I need to add salt to get the level back up to 3500 ppm. I just walked out to look at the SWG and it shows a solid red - low salt.

Is there a downside to just letting this issue go until the SWG is more consistently inaccurate or stops working?
 
Just got off the phone with a Pentair technician. He brought my system online so he could monitor. He saw the low salt system alert as well as no salt reading. He asked me to disconnect the swg from the panel and then reconnect. After reconnecting, the swg read 3350, which is pretty close to the actual ppm.

Then he looked at the time when the low salt warning came in, which was 5:45am. He explained that the swg, when powered, measures salt ppm every 12 hours. So 12 hours after the pool shut off (5:45am), the swg measured salinity when the water temp in the SWG was the same as the air temp, which was in the low 60's. He then went on to say the low night time air temperatures were causing the inaccurate salt readings. He said my swg was wired incorrectly and to rewire it to the filter pump so that it turns off when the pump turns off.
..
 
I just checked the panel wiring. The transformer for the intellichlor is indeed wired directly to a breaker. A sticker on the transformer states it must be wired to the filter pump relay. So it looks like I need to move the two power wires up to the the two load side connectors on the filter pump relay.
 
That sounds reasonable to me. My IC40 does not give accurate salt readings until the water temp is well above 70. I turn it off at 70 in the fall and switch to bleach and don't turn it on in spring until the water is above 70. I recently turned mine back on and added 3 bags of salt over a week and it was working great with water in mid-70s up to 80. We had so e rain and a cold front and the water dropped to 72 or so and I got low salt error again. Now water is 74 and climbing and no more low salt error. My first season in the fall I added salt several times because it said low salt and the water was in the upper 60s or so and it said the cell works down to 50something. Ha! I ended up with salt above 5000 and didn't have to add salt for a long time!

Other than that I love my IC40! Starting season 5 right now.
 

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