Intex SWG - Bad Cell ?!?

[jandafields]

I have an Intex SWG in a vinyl 12,000 gal pool. Water levels are always on par with the recommended levels in this forum, and calcium is less than 50... so no build up at all.

Salt concentration is 2800, which is within the manufacture specs I believe.

Here is what happened. It worked fine last year, and the year before. This now is my 3rd year.
This year, it does not make Chlorine. This is not one of those "adjustable" units. It is basically an 18volt power supply connected to the cells, and a timer so it only runs xx hours/day. Pretty simple.

I tested the voltage coming from the DC power supply. It is 18 volts when not connected to the salt cells, and 2 volts when connected to the cells. So..... evidently the 18volt DC power supply is bad.

So, I got a 12 Volt Car Battery Charger and connected to the cells. 12 volts may not be optimum, but it gives me something to do calculations with.

With the 12 volt power supply, which is cabable of putting out up to 10 amps, I am getting 12 volts and 1.5 amps.

That means, according to ohms law, that at 18 volts, it would be 2.25 amps.

QUESTION:

Does 18 volts at 2.25 amps seem a proper amount? Since I don't know what the amps was originally, I don't have anything to compare it to.

 

[JasonLion]

Welcome to TFP!

I'm not familiar with the numbers you should be seeing from an Intex unit in particular, but 18 volts at 2.25 amps is signficantly lower than most other brands run at.

The Intex unit is very simple, but it might still have some kind of shutdown mode where it turns down the voltage to protect the transformer. I think I remember someone mentioning a high salt level shut off, if nothing else.