Considering Salt - Have questions

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Following the forum, the Mortons Blue Bag - Water Softener Salt was available at lowes. Picked up 8 bags as a seeder. I know I will need a lot more, but will test once all the salt pellets dissolve and adjust from there and the total needed originally. I plan to add ~80% of whats called for, rest, wait two days and test again until no noticable increase beyond expected increase from bleach until the salinity is right for the RJ60+. Anyone have a "Sweet Spot" salinity level for the RJ60?
 
RJ45+ @ 3800 last year. 3900 this year. Not noticing much difference.

The 3900 is because I didn't quite questimate the 50% for the last bag.

Over the winter I had told myself I wanted salt @3600, but when came time to open I forgot and used 3800 in Pool Math.

3600-3800 would be good, depending on how much you replace your water from splash out and backwashing (evaporation has no effect to reduce salt).
 
Circupool on page 4 of https://www.circupool.com/assets/doc/CircuPool-RJ-Manual.pdf says optimum salt level is 3,500 ppm. I would not deliberately go over that. High salt levels causes higher amps which can cause electronics to fail. We have not yet seen if that is a problem in Circupool SWG as they are too new in use.
 
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ajw22 said:
Circupool on page 4 of https://www.circupool.com/assets/doc/CircuPool-RJ-Manual.pdf says optimum salt level is 3,500 ppm. I would not deliberately go over that. High salt levels causes higher amps which can cause electronics to fail. We have not yet seen if that is a problem in Circupool SWG as they are too new in use.
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Thank you, In my reef tank, manuals say 1.025 is best, but my corals love 1.028 for some reason and begin to bleach and lose color. Manufacturers say a range, but I wasn't sure if anyone had played with the range to find the optimal range for output. Lifespan seems hard to discern but feedback on it seems great so far, so thats why I went with it. I prefer to be on the slightly higher side of things as I can often get distracted or when social distancing ends, my line of work can pull me away for up to a week or so at a time. I am wanting to make sure I have buffer. I am positioned right in a storm area and get more inch's of rain than others, and my pool tend to run the filter during storms as I haven't decided if the benefit of it helping clean in the progress of the storm is better or worse, but that cycles the water and combined water flows out my overflow drains - basically refreshing the pool water anyways. (when it was pucks/powder - it helped keep CYA in line.).
 
The SWG will operate fine within the range of 3000 ppm - 3500ppm. You have plenty of head room on the low side,
 

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LivelyOasis said:
Anyone considering the CircuPool line, Their dist DiscountSaltPools is beyond impressive...... ITS ALREADY OUT FOR DELIVERY! They ship super fast!
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Yep, I ordered mine on May 11th, and it was delivered halfway across the country on the 13th. Very impressed. You're in the same state, so even faster.
 
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So a quick jump back in here, My RJ60+ seems to not be performing the way I hoped, but its also been raining insanely a lot. With yesterdays rains, my pool reached zero readable chlorine today on 50% output with 8 hour pool pump run time. I adjusted up to 100% and am running 24 hours. I did toss in some CalHypo to bring the pool to Chlorine: 2 and with more rain coming will measure chlorine again tomorrow morning, then slowly taper back on the output to see what % begins my drop.
 
You have an overflow drain?

Have you tested your salt level?
 
LivelyOasis said:
I do have an overflow drain, salt is at 3100 right now was at 3300 prior to all the rain.
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There are several reasons that could cause this problem. First, prior to when I switched to salt initially I had gotten in habit of running CYA low so I had room to use trichlor tablets for travel. So I didn't raise the CYA to recommended levels. Worked OK like this before weather got hot and sunny. But then had the same problem as you are. Raising CYA to 70 make a huge difference. Really surprised me how much improvement I got. Over the winter again this year (2nd season with my Circupool) CYA dropped again and I noticed same thing when sun got long and bright again. So far I'm running the same % power and run time as I did last year and FC is staying above target with no problem even with swimming almost every day.

The second reason could be you are starting to get an algae infestation. This will consume the chlorine and make it appear your output is low. Your logs indicate this could be the case but the readings are a week ago. Can you please post a current set of test results?

Third reason could be your salt concentration. I was very surprised to find I had lost a lot of salt this year after a couple weeks of heavy rain. Makes sense when I thought it through though. Pool overflowed several times and I was draining 6-8 inches several times per week. Before you know it that's several feet. We get a lot of rain this time of year so I run my salt above the ideal level (but still under max) to account for rain loss.

There is also a possibility the cell is faulty. This happens on a small number of cells for each manufacturer and that's why a real warranty is so important. It's far more likely your cause is CYA or algae. But if you rule out the items above you should contact Circupool. They have a good reputation for replacing defective cells.

I hope this helps.

Chris
 
What is the CC? Looked like you recently had readings over1 indicating a SLAM is needed. Here's an excerpt from Pool School:

"If you have algae, or the CC level is above 0.5, or the free chlorine (FC) level is zero, you should SLAM the pool. You cannot do this overnight…it often takes several days to see it completed…no shortcuts."

If this is the case you probably have algae consuming a lot of the FC and there's nothing wrong with the cell. All you need is to SLAM until you meet the completion criteria. Then you should be good with the swg.

I hope this helps.

Chris
 
Lively,

Once you confirm salt is correct with the K1766 test I would run FC, CC, and pH daily until you have your new swg lined out. You really need all 3 readings to know what's going on with the pool. After you get to know the pool you'll be able to drop back to a couple times per week.

Chris
 
Lively,

Once you confirm salt is correct with the K1766 test I would run FC, CC, and pH daily until you have your new swg lined out. You really need all 3 readings to know what's going on with the pool. After you get to know the pool you'll be able to drop back to a couple times per week.

One of the really nice things about a salt pool is it can be almost "set it and forget it". I just test to verify a couple times per week to be sure everything's OK. I've been at constant 40% with the same runtime now for over a year. Beginning of spring FC started to drop down so I did some further testing and found CYA was way low at 30 and salt was also low. I corrected these and FC jumped right up to 8. It now runs between 6-8 depending on amount of sun, rain, swimmers etc. One of our experts, @Jimrahbe posted once that he just runs a little above target. Since he's got several pools and been doing this for years longer than me I just started doing the same thing. Works great for me too!

Chris
 
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