Time for New Salt Generator?

[atcruz530]

I had my Salt Water Pool built in 2010. I do pretty much all the maintenance myself. I was wondering if someone could answer a couple of questions for me? I have an approximately 17,000 gallon pool and today I cleaned my filter. I noticed that I will need NEW cartridges so I ordered those off of Amazon. Saved me about $160.00 as my local pool store wanted that much more for the same filters. I also cleaned my Salt Water Generator as per the directions and I waited for the acid/water solution to eat away all the calcium deposits for about 12 minutes. I reinstalled generator but as I was doing, so I noticed hairline cracks in the body of the generator. It isn't leaking, but I like to take a PROACTIVE response to things instead of waiting for the problem to get worse. I currently have a Turbo Cell T-Cell-15. I looked on Amazon.com and when you do an exact search for the same cell several pop up and they look different than mine, but I did find my exact same one and they wanted about $710.00 for it. I went on Ebay and I found the same looking Turbo Cell as mine, but in the listing it says it is a T-Cell 3. Something tells me even though it looks EXACTLY like mine it isn't. Can someone please help? Is there NO WAY of getting away from the HIGH cost of a NEW Generator and how many years should they last? I have had mine for 5 years and I probably don't clean it every three months like it says. Honestly I clean it twice a year and during the winter I followed my pool store's advice and disconnect it completely. If someone could provide a link to a T-CELL 15 at a reasonable price I would appreciate it. I know pools cost money. I just like to do repairs myself and don't like to pay markup on an item if I can help it.
Thanks, Alan
Yuba City, CA

 

[chiefwej]

The T-15 cell is rated at 40k gallons, vs T-3 at 15k. There is a big performance and a price difference. Buy a T-15 not the smaller capacity T-3. You can buy a new T-15 cell on Amazon for $399. If you hunt around you might find even better prices. But, do not buy a genaric replacement, there isn't much savings and there have been many complaints about them.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B002EL40RM/ref=twister_B005AOU4Z2?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1

The life of a cell depends on a number of factors, but at five years you are nearing the end of the average life span of a cell.

 

[Donny]

I think you did well with the T15 lasting 5 years. It seems the average life span ranges from 3 to 5 years. I did see on Amazon 710 for a replacement T15 cell. That was Canadian, NOT US. $399 is about the cheapest I have seen. Stay away from generic replacements. JMHO.