Re: New 14' getting - upgrade now to Sand or Salt? why bot
The sand filter will be the best upgrade for your pool, and in all honesty if money is a factor, the SWG can wait or even never be a part of your pool. It's great, but it doesn't mean you don't have to test or add chemicals to your pool. It only means that most of the time, it will produce the chlorine the pool needs.
SWG will make your ph rise, so you'll have to maintain that below 7.8 with muriatic acid. How often? Unknown, it depends on a lot of other factors. You'll have to test for it.
Before your SWG starts, you'll use bleach to chlorinate. The salt has to dissolve for 24 hours prior to starting the SWG, and it's hard on a SWG to bring a pool from 0 to a proper FC level on it's own (SWG should be started when FC is at least minimum). So, again you'll need to be testing both prior to starting a SWG and afterwards for a few days to a few weeks perhaps making sure the SWG is doing what you need it to do.
You're also going to need CYA, again before the SWG is started and also shortly after or in conjunction with your first dose of chlorine (bleach). Here again, eventually you'll test the CYA to be sure what you added hit the mark which is 70-80ppm once the SWG is running.
There's a lot to think about with a pool but the basics are a good filter and chlorination. You can do as many/most of us do around here and take 4 minutes every day and put bleach into your pool too. It sounds like a lot of responsibility, but with the tools you'll learn here it really ends up being just a few private moments with your pool a day. After the first season of BBB (no SWG) I was able to pour 3 cups 3oz of bleach into my pool without measuring and hit my target of adding 3ppm per day to the pool.
It took all of 2 minutes actually. Time fetching the bleach from the garage was most of it.
Additionally, with a 14 foot Intex pool, you do not need the larger filter and pump. The 1600gph pump is more than plenty for this size of a pool. I have one on a 15x48. I also run an intex filter over the rail attached to a skimmer.
To clarify the power of the 1600gph one day the kids turned the eyeball on the return in the opposite direction of normal. Normally the pool swirls in a clockwise direction. I looked at the pool and the leaves on top were swirling counter clockwise. Huh?? Now bear in mind that the cartridge filter originally provided with this pool is still running, and under normal circumstances swirls the pool in a clockwise direction. The power of the 1600gph had completely overrode the cartridge filter and had the water turned on itself. All that from a supposed measely 600gph more.
Hope this information helps. And whatever you do decide, please get a test kit asap. You really do need it.
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