Help me pick a new SWG, or tell me to bail on them

[tedbriggs]

What I have now is an old Jandy APURE1400 with a dead front board and cell with about 5 months of use on it. It seems you can't get parts easily or cheap for these anymore so I want to just replace the whole thing. I've had to do a fair amount of work on it, from changing from a two port to the three port plumbing, some dead sensors, the occasional fast scale buildup and finally the dead control board. The scale likely was my fault as my pH control has not been the best, I have one spa to pool waterfall that runs when in pool mode circulation and two sheers that I keep off most of the time, plus I had (remodeled at the end of last pool season) limestone masonry that was constantly flaking into the pool. I added acid a lot but really didn't keep up 100% of the time (terrible about the non-swimming months). That said when it was working it was great, water quality was top notch and chlorine levels were very stable.

I was looking at the Hayward AquaRite Pro as they have pH control built in, but I'd like to know how well they work and if it's just going to be another maintenance job waiting to happen. It looks like the CO2 or acid will be something to you have to buy and refill regularly, I'm not convinced that this is better than pouring some Muratic acid in the pool every weekend.

Compupool looks to be inexpensive, has a good warrenty and you can see the cell to check on it.

Pentair seems more expensive but you get new control electronics along with the new cell so you don't have to worry about which is bad or if you can still get parts. The power center seems unlikely to change.

Finally I could ditch the SWG, keep salt in the pool for the feel and use a tablet feeder or something like that. I assume I'd need to add acid less often then but I might be opening myself up to new problems.

It's be a plus if I could fit the new system in the existing unions as well, not sure if any of the brands use the same size. I assume I will lose Jandy PDA control with any of the above options but at this point I'm fine with that as I'm fairly sour on Jandy at this point.

 

[Glock30]

tedbriggs,
I did a massive amount of research on these last year as I was buying all new stuff for my pool.
I came up with CircuPool brand.

Check them out!
http://www.discountsaltpool.com/index.htm

Be sure to buy a unit that is oversize for your pool (ie RJ-20 or RJ-30 for you)

-Price is great
-Service is Great
-Quality is Great
-Warranty is Great
-Ease of use is Great

Good Luck

 

[bobodaclown]

For $750 delivered you can get a CPSC48 delivered. I've got one on my 17K pool. Overall pretty satisfied with it. Compupool also makes the CircuPool brand.

 

[tedbriggs]

Ordered a Compupool CPSC48 for $700.99 as it seems hard to beat that price/performance. Hopefully I'll have the pool clear when it gets here.

 

[jaimejaime]

I have the Compupool CPSC36, and I paid $500 for it three years ago. I'm still on my original cell.

We have pretty hard water here in AZ, so I need to clean the cell weekly in the summer, but it's part of my ritual to soak it when I clean all the baskets, so it's not too cumbersome.

I think it's a pretty good system for the price.

 

[jch]

If you haven't thrown it away, I would like to give you a few bucks for your old cell. I honestly think you can build your own SWG electronics without all the fancy shmancy controls. I measured the voltage and current going to my cell and it is simply 10V at 4 amps when salt is proper. One can build a simple power supply that can put out 10V at 4 amps for $20 worth of parts. The only trick would be to ensure that the voltage is floating with respect to ground. If you build it with a ground reference, then you are creating ions with a potential to ground and they would attack any metal on your pool with galvanic corrosion. So if you ask yourself what the fancy shmancy electronics does, you will quickly realize that it puts out a fixed voltage and measures the current. If the current goes higher than a certain value, then you have high salt level or plates that are shorting out due to an impurity. If you have very low current, you have low salt or scale build-up on the plates. Other than that, the controller is simply a clock circuit that runs your SWG for a certain period of time every day. Of course, you need a flow switch to shut it off if your pump stops.

 

[tedbriggs]

Yah, I still have it in the plumbing as I don't have a bypass. The transformer and back board are still likely good as well. Pool electronics are a good 10 years behind the rest of the industry, more in some cases. Replacing them with a hobby level micro-controller board shouldn't be too terribly hard. Software would take some time too. Most of the challenge is interfacing with the high voltage stuff, my cell is at ~26V for example. You should just replace the pump and other controls as well if you're going to do it.