Do I need to add salt yearly to salt water pool?

[chi-chi]

Hello I know this might be a silly question but do I need to add pool salt to a pool yearly? I opened my saltwater pool today and got it cleaned, ran the pump for 30 minutes then tested my water. Below is what I got...

FC - 1.2ppm
CC - .8ppm
Ph - 7.0 (7.43 digital)
TA - 90 maybe 80 ppm
CYA less than 30ppm
Salt - 1698-1717ppm

I then entered this into pool math and added 2 lbs of CYA and the dosage amount of bleach aka chlorine to reach slam level. The pump filter is running for a 24 hr cycle with thr vacuum. My question is do I still need to add pool salt or do I just keep adding chlorine to get to slam level?

 

[AK-]

Definitely maybe.

Salt (mostly) only goes away with dilution. So if you had a lot of dilution due splash/leak/drain-refill or rain-overflow then your salt will drop significantly. Otherwise it should stay pretty stable while pool was closed.

 

[Mdragger88]

If you drained the pool down some for winter & had to refill then you may have quite a bit less salt than you closed with.
How are you testing for salt?

 

[chi-chi]

Thanks everyone. @AK- & @Mdragger88 So I drained down below the skimmers and refilled with a garden hose then to test everything except salt I used the recommended Taylor 2600-c kit but for salt I used a digital salt test meter I got off of Amazon as it's all I have?

Salt test kit:
eSeasonGear SALT-3050 Waterproof IP65 Meter, Digital Salinity PPM Temperature Tester for Salt Water Pool and Koi Fish Pond Amazon.com: eSeasonGear SALT-3050 Waterproof IP65 Meter, Digital Salinity PPM Temperature Tester for Salt Water Pool and Koi Fish Pond : Industrial & Scientific

 

[Mdragger88]

Just remember to add 1/2 of what PoolMath calls for - let it circulate a day & then retest & add more if necessary based on what u ended up with.
With such a small pool you can overshoot easily then u will be draining.
That swg has kind of a tight tolerance of how much salt it likes.
Mine preferred 2800- 2900ppm - anymore or less & they threw the dreaded high or low salt alarm
It doesn’t help that meters & strips can be off by 500ppm.
The Taylor k1766 salt kit only has a variance of 200ppm.
On another note how do you like your zx300?

 

[chi-chi]

Just remember to add 1/2 of what PoolMath calls for - let it circulate a day & then retest & add more if necessary based on what u ended up with.
With such a small pool you can overshoot easily then u will be draining.
That swg has kind of a tight tolerance of how much salt it likes.
Mine preferred 2800- 2900ppm - anymore or less & they threw the dreaded high or low salt alarm
It doesn’t help that meters & strips can be off by 500ppm.
The Taylor k1766 salt kit only has a variance of 200ppm.
On another note how do you like your zx300?

@Mdragger88 I like the zx300 and it seems to get the job done and I like that it climbs the walls (not sure if the original did too) but so far I'm happy and I got it for the same price as the original so I got it and returned the original intex.

It does seem to move very randomly and seems to repeat areas alot but I also didn't measure and cut the hose to my pool size either so that could have something to do with it.

I will retest to see if I'm at slam level tonight and if so then I'll add salt. I have one 40 lbs bag leftover so I should be OK. Good to hear the tip of 2800-2900 ppm because all the online pool salt calculators recommended 3500 ppm.

 

[Mdragger88]

Intex likes less salt probably because they are cheaply made & the components cannot tolerate the higher temps produced by higher salt concentrations like more robust permanent units.
For this reason it is VERY important that you do not turn on the swg until the salt addition has had time to mix (about a day) or a slug of concentrated salt can fry your unit. I also always dump my salt in on the far opposite side of my intake & brush it around well.
If the pool is clear & u pass the Overnight Chlorine Loss Test just Maintain fc w/ liquid chlorine according to the FC/CYA Levels until u get the swg running. Its a good maintainer but won’t catch up well & u don’t want anything growing in the meantime.