High Salt On A New Installation?

[NullQwerty]

Hey folks,

Trying to figure something out and hoped you can help. Just installed a new salt system. The pool is 30 years old, and I've owned it for the last 6 years. I never had a salt system on it before, and I'm pretty sure no prior owners had a salt system.

I added 17 bags of 40# salt (so 680 lbs total), which is just under the recommended amount for my 24,000 gallon pool. The salt system was giving a high salt reading and has slowly climbed until now, 2 weeks later, it reads 6,100 ppm. I brought a sample to a pool store to see what it showed. They used an electronic machine (the one that looks like a scale and has a little bowl on it). Their system only reads up to 5000 ppm, and my sample was off the charts.

I'm still in the opening phase of my pool. All my other levels are either good or very close to good. Although, my pool is still green as I battle a truly annoying algae problem.

So, 2 questions:
1) Should these tests be trusted? Should I empty some water out? If so, how much?
2) How would a pool that was never a salt pool, get such a high reading, when the amount of salt I added should have only brought it to 3500 ppm?

Thanks!

 

[JasonLion]

1) Those tests are not precise enough to say exactly what your salt level is, but it is very reasonable to assume that it is over 5,000.
2) There is always salt in the water. Tap water has a little salt in it and nearly every pool chemical you add contains some salt. Over time, with repeated chemical additions and evaporation, the salt level slowly goes up. After several years the salt level can easily be over 1,000, sometimes over 2,000, even if you have never added any salt.

 

[NullQwerty]

Ahh. Ok. I had heard that you could have some salt in your pool as you described. But I thought we were talking in the < 500 ppm range. So, lets say I wanna drop it 1,000 ppm to start. Would you recommend to drain like 6" (18x36 IG)?

 

[NullQwerty]

Found this post that talks about how much to drain.
salt-content-is-4700-ppm-how-much-water-do-i-drain-t28200.html

Thanks for the help!