Starting up SWG, adding salt, TDS, help!

[azxd09]

Hello,

I have been happily on the BBB system for the past year and a half and am so happy I had found this site...never had any pool issues, and been adding bleach and testing daily. I decided to bite the bullet and order a new SWG cell (previous owners had existing SWG system but cell had died). Before I added the salt, I used salt test strips to test my salt ppm, and measured 1600ppm. This seemed high to me since all I had added since my drain and refill 1.5 years ago was bleach, so to double check my reading I took my sample into the dreaded pool store, where the feedback I received was "TDS is way too high, you must drain your pool or a SWG system will not work properly." I took it with the grain of salt that I use when I go into pool stores, and walked out, but forgot to ask what my ppm level of TDS actually was. My question is:

1. Is adding 1-2ppm of bleach every day for the past year and a half enough to raise my salt levels to 1600ppm?
2. If yes to #1 above, to bring my salt level to 3500ppm, would I just add the equivalent of 1800ppm (3500-1700=1800)?

Here are my pool stats:

12000 gal
3ppm FC
0ppm CC
280 CH
60ppm CYA
7.4 pH
92 deg F (live in AZ)

 

[linen]

50 ounces of bleach (to raise your FC by 2 ppm) adds 3.3 ppm salt to your 12000 gallon pool.

3.3 X 365 X 1.5= 1806 ppm salt...of course you have had splash out and you may not be maintaining the pool 365 day/year...but you have added a lot of salt.

As you already know, ignore TDS. By the way 1600 of the number they measured is salt.

2. If yes to #1 above, to bring my salt level to 3500ppm, would I just add the equivalent of 1800ppm (3500-1700=1800)?

Yes. 3500-1600=1900 ppm salt to add.

 

[azxd09]

Thank you for the response! I feel much better now.

 

[JamesW]

It is usually best to add less than the full amount of salt to avoid overshooting the target level. I would suggest targeting about 500 ppm lower than the target. If your salt system has a salt readout, check that first before adding the final amount of salt.