Bought my house with an in-ground @12,000 gal pool in June of 2021. TFP saved my bacon. Bought a taylor test kit and I put in a salt cell (circupool RJ30+) and got it stable pretty quickly. It's been a marathon replacing old parts but everything has been going smoothly. In Central TX (Austin) so we don't really close our pool (there's no cover) but this is not new.
In early May, I noticed that the FC level was dropping from the usual 4-6ppm. CYA was low (about 30) so I got it up to 75 and added some shock to get back up to 6. Cranked the salt cell to 100%. FC had crashed down to 1 by the following week.
The salt cell was rated for 15k hours and I had exceeded that, so I de-scaled it, gave it another couple days with no change, then ordered a replacement (just the cell, the console part was working fine). Put in the replacement, no change.
I read up on reddit and ChatGPT and both say a) check the phosphate level (which I'd never done before) and b) shock the heck out of it, that there is sufficient FC demand that the salt cell can't keep up. I dumped in the last of my solid shock and added 2 1 lb bags of shock powder (and have ordered more). It went back up to 6ppm FC yesterday. Bought a phosphate test and it showed 0 (which makes sense, there's not really a source of phosphates anywhere near my pool)
1 day later (today), FC is 3ppm.
Did I just not shock enough? It seems unlikely that a brand new salt cell is busted but this has never happened before and this is the 4th year I've prepped the pool for the Summer. TY TFP!
In early May, I noticed that the FC level was dropping from the usual 4-6ppm. CYA was low (about 30) so I got it up to 75 and added some shock to get back up to 6. Cranked the salt cell to 100%. FC had crashed down to 1 by the following week.
The salt cell was rated for 15k hours and I had exceeded that, so I de-scaled it, gave it another couple days with no change, then ordered a replacement (just the cell, the console part was working fine). Put in the replacement, no change.
I read up on reddit and ChatGPT and both say a) check the phosphate level (which I'd never done before) and b) shock the heck out of it, that there is sufficient FC demand that the salt cell can't keep up. I dumped in the last of my solid shock and added 2 1 lb bags of shock powder (and have ordered more). It went back up to 6ppm FC yesterday. Bought a phosphate test and it showed 0 (which makes sense, there's not really a source of phosphates anywhere near my pool)
1 day later (today), FC is 3ppm.
Did I just not shock enough? It seems unlikely that a brand new salt cell is busted but this has never happened before and this is the 4th year I've prepped the pool for the Summer. TY TFP!
