CircuPool SJ vs EDGE: Oversize with shorter warranty, or longer warranty

[Astromechskis]

I’m looking to take advantage of Black Friday sales and pick up a SWG, and from reading through the forums, it seems the CircuPools are well reviewed. After looking at the sales at discountsaltpool.com…

I’m debating if with my 21,000 gallon pool, if I should go with an EDGE-25 with a 7 year warranty, or an SJ-45 with a 3 year warranty. Both are just under $1000 with Black Friday savings. I realized with an EDGE-25 I may get shorter life out of the element, than going with a higher capacity unit, but I assume if it stops working before 7 years, their would be a pro-rated refund. Where as if I go with a SJ-45, it may last longer, but its warranty ends 3 years sooner. I know everyone says size the system 2x larger, but I’m not sure if going with a 2x capacity but lower warranties systems is worth it?

Any thoughts or opinions. I did see that one poster with a similar pool in similar climate was running their EDGE-40 at about 30%, which would mean for my pool I would be running the EDGE-25 at about 50% power if I needed a similar amount of chlorine generation, so it seems the EDGE-25 would produce enough chlorine. So the really question is if I should trade sizing (which would me longer life) for warranty? I’d appreciate any opinions people have.

 

[reggiehammond]

You need a 45, minimum. A 25 would need to run almost 24/7 at 100% output, which shortens the life of the SWCG. I wouldn't overthink the warranty angle - most SWCG will die from exhaustion of the rare earth metals (ie. you've used it all up.)

The smartest move would be to get a 50-60, which would both last longest, and leverage the cost of control board, etc. As I'm sure you've noticed, the cost delta between the smallest SWCG and the largest isn't much. Think of it like a gas tank - a small car with a big gas tank can go a long way before refilling.

 

[jmastron]

In my opinion long SWCG warranties are mostly worthless -- take a look at the details and in the later years (sometimes 4+) all you get is an 10-20% discount off of the then-MSRP -- and these things are usually on "sale" all the time anyway by about that much.

For your size pool a 40-45k rated SWCG (usually rated 1.2-1.5lbs/day) should be sufficient. With a proper CYA level (70-80) chlorine consumption is lower. I have a generic 40K-gal unit (Calimar) with a 23Kgal pool in a very hot/sunny climate, and I need ~8-9 hours of runtime per day in the very peak of the summer, other times less. Oversizing "too much" has theoretical cost savings, but the payback is over so long that it may not pan out (e.g. if you calculate the savings as 20% because a bigger cell might last 11 years vs 7, but the cell ends up needing replacement or a control board fails at 8 years...). And there have been some threads here reporting measurements of the higher capacity Circupool units not matching what was expected.

 

[ajw22]

I realized with an EDGE-25 I may get shorter life out of the element, than going with a higher capacity unit, but I assume if it stops working before 7 years, their would be a pro-rated refund.

Below is the Edge warranty.

The cell being depleted due to normal usage is not a manufacturers defect and is unlikely to be covered under warranty.

And even if they cover it you will pay 60%-80% of the list price, not the discounted price you originally paid.

Basically you have a 2 to 3 year warranty against manufacturers defects in the system.




And here is the SJ-45 warranty...

 

[markayash]

I have the edge 40
And have been happy. One thing is also compare replacement cell cost. Like others have said getting a warranty replacement won’t be easy after 2 or 3 years.

 

[Astromechskis]

Thanks everyone for the inputs. Greatly appreciated and helpful! Not sure which one I will go with yet, but I am tempted to go with the SJ line.

 

[Astromechskis]

Quick update. I ended up going with the RJ-45. It was really ended up being between the SJ-45 and RJ-45… as the EDGE-40 was only $200 less expensive than the RJ-45 (after the $400 discount, so it was a better deal). So the real question was if I spend just under $1k for the SJ, or just under $1.4k for the RJ. Decided to go with the RJ, as I’m planning to be in this house for some time.

 

[PoolStored]

Quick update. I ended up going with the RJ-45. It was really ended up being between the SJ-45 and RJ-45… as the EDGE-40 was only $200 less expensive than the RJ-45 (after the $400 discount, so it was a better deal). So the real question was if I spend just under $1k for the SJ, or just under $1.4k for the RJ. Decided to go with the RJ, as I’m planning to be in this house for some time.

The SJ increments of output are 25%. The RJ increments are 5%. That alone made the difference for me. 5% increments are stable for week(s). You would likely be changing the output all the time on the SJ. My .02 cents.