Aqualine Cell Fragments Found--Can you help identify?

[hardwareguy]

I inspected and cleaned my Aqualine Cell last night and noticed the following in the cell. The picture is not great, but they are gray in color and are a type of plastic. Is this something that is delaminating from the interior of the cell? I cannot see too much other than the plates and they are clean. Any of the experts have an opinion? I have submitted a question to Hayward, but I have not heard back from them. The cell is about 4 months old.

FC 5
CC 0
PH 7.6
TA 160
CH 240
CYA 75

Thanks!

Brian

 

[el_steak]

Could it be chunks of dried PVC pipe glue that would have detached from the inside of your pipes ahead of the chlorinator and simply got stuck in it?

 

[waste]

I don't think they are from the cell itself! What is 'upline" from the cell? Some of them look to be either electrical tape, but others look like blobs of black plastic If they used black glue on the pipes, I think el_steak is correct. Is the cell operating normally?

Please keep us informed on this - you've piqued my curiosity

 

[Rockcrawler]

Looks like some type of gasket material, like after you replace your waterpump of your car, and you get a little bit of the RTV floating in the radiator.

 

[hardwareguy]

Thanks for the suggestions. I received this reply from the Goldline Tech this afternoon:

I have been working with these systems for 5 years and have never seen this type of debris from the cell. There is no meterial of this color or type within the cell or any component of the chlorinator package for that matter. The only thing that may come from the cell in this approximate color range would be the epoxy that seals in the electronic portion of the cell but if this were to fail, you would see this leaking out in a thick liquid form, not plastic chunks. I am unsure of where that meterial came from nor what may have saused this. What are your over all chemical levels? The pH should be 7.2 - 7.6PPM and the chlorine should be around 1 - 3PPM. If the pH or chlorine goes on the high side, this situation could start causing damage/ malfunctions. This is still nothing our unit can cause. High chlorine levels means the unit is set too high for it's desired output and this would need to be lowered to drop the chlorine levels.

The cell is plumbed right after the heat pump. The cell was working great until a couple of days ago when I noticed that the chlorine was not staying steady throughout the day as it had in the past. I thought that there might be some buildup on the plates so I took it apart last night and found the pieces of plastic.

I do have a question about the comments from the Tech. Why do they insist that the FC levels be maintained between 1-3 ppm? I have kept the FC in the 3-5 range per the pool school instructions. Just curious.

I am planning on taking the cell apart again in a couple of days to see if anymore of this shows up.

Thanks again for the suggestions, I will keep you posted on what i find out.

Brian

 

[Strannik]

I'd say it's PVC glue

 

[JasonLion]

Varying recommendations of what are appropriate FC levels are common through out the industry. We try to pick levels for our recommendations here at TFP that are going to be trouble free for nearly everyone. Other sources quote levels from various sources developed with various goals in mind, not all of which will work reliably in actual practice.