I've been reading lots about ORP in posts...enough that I probably want to go outside and shut the thing off.
My system was turned on in February. Once the pool started to heat up, I had lots of problems. The Hayward person's been out to my house a few times since then. He's pretty helpful and gave me his card and told me to call him if I have more problems (which I have).
For starters, he said it's pretty difficult to figure out how to use the system from reading the manual. He then took me on a tour of how it works in a few minutes that was much more helpful than the manual. After that, the system would run all day and I'd still have practically 0 FC in my pool.
That's when I found TFP. I figured out I had a chlorine demand problem (2 pool stores couldn't figure that out). I shocked the pool with proper levels and the chlorine generator started working properly! I thought life was good. It was too good. The chlorine generator kept going. I was up to 12.5 FC.
I finally started charting things. I figured out that ORP seems to be the inverse of chlorine: when chlorine goes up, ORP goes down and vice-versa. The Hayward person said I needed to have enough CYA for ORP to work properly...like the 60-80 range. Interestingly, I read posts about ORP here that says CYA needs to be low for ORP. My current CYA is 80.
The Hayward person finally decided to replace the ORP probe to see if that fixes anything. Strangely, since the ORP probe has been replaced my FC has dropped to <1. The generator runs, but I'm not getting much chlorine. Before when I let it run for a few days I wound up with really high levels of chlorine. All they did was change the ORP probe, so I can't imagine how that would affect chlorine generation (it's ON). I don't think I have a chlorine demand problem this time, since CC is .2. That's been pretty constant for a while.
With this inverse relationship between ORP and FC, should I just give up with the ORP sensor? Some of you have encouraged people to play more to get ORP to work. At this point I'm just frustrated and not happy I spent the money for this (I'm happy with the pH part, though).
Any idea why the SWG runs and I'm not getting higher chlorine levels? This is a new system.
salt = 3000ppm (average according to AquaRite). Temp 79F, pH 7.5, FC .6, CC .2
TA's been pretty constant at 70-80, CH @ 280-300; SI (from the Taylor test kit wheel) has ranged from -0.30 to +0.05, so that all looks good.
My system was turned on in February. Once the pool started to heat up, I had lots of problems. The Hayward person's been out to my house a few times since then. He's pretty helpful and gave me his card and told me to call him if I have more problems (which I have).
For starters, he said it's pretty difficult to figure out how to use the system from reading the manual. He then took me on a tour of how it works in a few minutes that was much more helpful than the manual. After that, the system would run all day and I'd still have practically 0 FC in my pool.
That's when I found TFP. I figured out I had a chlorine demand problem (2 pool stores couldn't figure that out). I shocked the pool with proper levels and the chlorine generator started working properly! I thought life was good. It was too good. The chlorine generator kept going. I was up to 12.5 FC.
I finally started charting things. I figured out that ORP seems to be the inverse of chlorine: when chlorine goes up, ORP goes down and vice-versa. The Hayward person said I needed to have enough CYA for ORP to work properly...like the 60-80 range. Interestingly, I read posts about ORP here that says CYA needs to be low for ORP. My current CYA is 80.
The Hayward person finally decided to replace the ORP probe to see if that fixes anything. Strangely, since the ORP probe has been replaced my FC has dropped to <1. The generator runs, but I'm not getting much chlorine. Before when I let it run for a few days I wound up with really high levels of chlorine. All they did was change the ORP probe, so I can't imagine how that would affect chlorine generation (it's ON). I don't think I have a chlorine demand problem this time, since CC is .2. That's been pretty constant for a while.
With this inverse relationship between ORP and FC, should I just give up with the ORP sensor? Some of you have encouraged people to play more to get ORP to work. At this point I'm just frustrated and not happy I spent the money for this (I'm happy with the pH part, though).
Any idea why the SWG runs and I'm not getting higher chlorine levels? This is a new system.
salt = 3000ppm (average according to AquaRite). Temp 79F, pH 7.5, FC .6, CC .2
TA's been pretty constant at 70-80, CH @ 280-300; SI (from the Taylor test kit wheel) has ranged from -0.30 to +0.05, so that all looks good.
