I am aware of the role of cyanuric acid, but I want to keep the amount to a minimum because it has a huge impact on the sanitizing power of chlorine. My previous pool that I had for many years didn't have any CYA at all and used a liquid chlorine pump with an ORP sensing system. It worked great, the chlorine levels could be kept very low (<1ppm) and the water was great.
Now that we have moved to a "sunnier" part of the world, I accept the fact that we won't be able to get away with having no CYA in the water, but 80ppm is ridiculous IMHO. There's a famous paper on cyanuric acid "
Cyanurics, benefactor or bomb?" that contains a lot of useful scientific information on stabilized pool water. It's impossible to argue with the findings of that paper.
About the ORP sensors: I calibrated the sensor with a ORP buffer solution so that's not an issue.
My goal is to have pool water that is balanced and safe. The balanced part is easy. I keep it safe by maintaining at least 650mV ORP (calibrated). The only variable is the CYA levels. The more CYA, the more FC is needed to keep the water safe. I don't like the idea of having 5ppm+ of chlorine in the water. After all, chlorine is toxic (that's why it kills algae, bacteria and other pathogens).
Given the fact that I'm fine with spending a little more money on electricity and muriatic acid, is there any reason why keeping 20ppm or less CYA is a bad thing in a SWG pool?
Specifics regarding my installation:
- Chlorine generator is oversized for the pool (generator is rated for a 40,000 gallon pool but our pool is only 13,000 gallons).
- pH is controlled by an automatic acid feeder and muriatic acid is cheap.
- We have a variable speed pump that is very efficient (using less than 200W of power to maintain a flow of more than 1,000 gal/h).