How to add salt

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C

cobra46

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LifeTime Supporter
May 31, 2007
467
Rocklin, Ca
I have some questions about starting my SWG. I'm coming up on a month since my pool was filled. From what I hear, one must wait a month before starting up the SWG.

My PB is taking care of the chemicals for the first month but after that I'm on my own. I bought the SWG generator myself so I don't think the PB will be adding any salt.

Where is the cheapest place to buy salt? I see Home Depot has water softener salt granules for fairly cheap. The bag says something like 'up to 99.6% pure'. This kind of bothers me. I would prefer to see something that says at least 99.6% pure. What kind of salt does everyone else use? I assume the pellets would be much more difficult to disolve.

How do I add the salt? Should I pre-disolve it a bit at a time in a bucket or can I just sprinkle it around the pool? Should I pour it into a skimmer or main drain?

Thanks
 
The water softener salt @ HD or Lowe's works just fine. I think it's called solar salt. The stuff I bought was in blue bags, best I can remember. I figured up how many bags I needed, and poured them in around the edge of the pool, then used my brush to stir it up quite a bit.

I found this thread in the "Automatic Chlorinators:SWG, Liquidator, etc" forum.
 
I bought Morton's pool salt from Sam's Wholesale. I think it was $4-5.00 for a 40 lb bag. I didn't wait a month to start up my SWG. Did it week one, poured it in, brushed it around and made my kids play with it until it dissolved. (I know, I'm a terrible mom.) No problems. My pool is AG so maybe that makes a difference as to why I didn't have to wait a week.
 
I just pour the salt in the skimers (3) by the time I get the third filled the fist one has almost desolved. Since I need 1,200 lbs of salt I try to find the 80lb gags of solar salt in the blue bags. The last time, it cost about $7 per bag, however that store has closed, So I may need to go with HD.

Rich
 
I want to mention that it took 12 hours for the salt concentration to level out - I poured the 560 lb salt (= 7 blue bags) into the shallow end and brushed it around for 10 minutes. Except for a few pebbles that came with it it had completely dissolved. At first the salt reading was 5700 ppm ! Shock ! But the heavier high salt water from the bottom must have migrated to the main drain, thus giving the SWG temporarily a higher concentration of salt.

The test kit salt test strips and the SWG measurement of the salt concentration agreed on salt levels.
 

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Hi Kevin,

that's what the pool builder told me but I have no way of being certain. I bet they did not know for sure either, hard to tell with a free form pool.

According to the Pool Calculator http://www.poolcalculator.com/ it would have taken me 669 lbs to get to that level so either I have less water (closer to 21000 gal) or already had some salt in the water (not impossible).

I only used 7 of the 8 80 lbs bags I had and I am glad I did.

I suggest you sneak up on the right level - put in 6-7 bags, measure, check with your SWG manual for the optimum level and then continue to add gradually.

Patrick
 
I would think so - the AquaPure told me 143 (ppm) but I don't know how accurate the reading is at that level ... I guess the safest way is to take your time and test ...

BTW I had only added 3 or 4 gallons of bleach, some dry acid and CYA, the water is fresh from the tap (70%) and a truck (30%) ...
 
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