How to trick Hayward TCELL15 that Salt Level is fine?

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mas985 said:
Isn't the cell still under warranty? Contact Hayward and file a claim.

What was the dilution ratio of the acid when you cleaned the cell? I never use more than 10:1 or 3% acid.

Worn cells are not totally worthless. I have been using one for the past year after the unit shut down for low salt:

Failing T-15 SWG Cell Experiment

I am currently on my 3rd T-15 SWG cell for an 18 year old pool. The 1st cell lasted about 9 years and the 2nd about 4 years and just passed year 4 on the 3rd cell. I thought it might be useful to document this cell's behavior as it is going through the last stages of useful life. As time goes...
www.troublefreepool.com www.troublefreepool.com
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Yes I did replace under warranty, that is the current working one. I was trying to see if there was a fix for the old one because it seemed to fail prematurely. My original Tcell-15 lasted 6 years. I bought the 940 replacement version expecting a longer life. I used 25% acid per instructions. Do you thin that causes plate damage? Anything else I can do to get life from it?
 
BoxfordPool said:
Yes I did replace under warranty, that is the current working one. I was trying to see if there was a fix for the old one because it seemed to fail prematurely. My original Tcell-15 lasted 6 years. I bought the 940 replacement version expecting a longer life. I used 25% acid per instructions. Do you thin that causes plate damage?
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Possibly
BoxfordPool said:
Anything else I can do to get life from it?
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Read the thread I posted. You could get an extra year out of the cell like I did.
 
I read your post but I do not see or understand how you got another year? With Low Salt reading the ProLogic shuts down the cell. The whole point of my post here is asking how do I trick the system to think there is plenty of salt so the Cell will turn on. I am still unclear on how to do that so I can get it working again. Once it thinks there is salt and turns the cell on, I can then monitor the chlorine to see if it is actually generating or not. But right now it will not even turn on until the salt reading issue is solved. For clarity, my salt is 3300PPM, so the IS plenty of salt...the problem is the cell does not think there is enough salt. That is the problem I am trying to solve.
 
BoxfordPool said:
I read your post but I do not see or understand how you got another year? With Low Salt reading the ProLogic shuts down the cell. The whole point of my post here is asking how do I trick the system to think there is plenty of salt so the Cell will turn on. I am still unclear on how to do that so I can get it working again. Once it thinks there is salt and turns the cell on, I can then monitor the chlorine to see if it is actually generating or not. But right now it will not even turn on until the salt reading issue is solved. For clarity, my salt is 3300PPM, so the IS plenty of salt...the problem is the cell does not think there is enough salt. That is the problem I am trying to solve.
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Try changing the cell type to T-9 or T-5.

The controller expects less performance from a smaller cell.
 
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The T5 cell is about 1/2 the size of a T15 cell so when you set the controller to expect a T5 cell, the controller adjusts the conversion of amps to salt. Basically, it doubles the value.

So while the old cell was reading 1300 ppm @ 3.22 amps in T15 mode, in T5 mode should read around 2600 ppm. The unit does not shut off until 2400 ppm so you can extend the cell life a little bit. Just don't forget to switch back the mode when you go back to the new cell.

You might also try an acid bath for the OLD cell. One thing I discovered about failing cells is that they may look clean but there is a oxidized coating, basically rust, that reduces the current/production of the cell.

But going forward with your new cell, an acid bath is a last resort. To clean a cell, I use a bamboo skewer to pick off any scale. If I do use acid it is very diluted, 20 Baume 10:1. It takes longer to clean but I believe it is less harsh on the cell.
 
mas985 said:
The T5 cell is about 1/2 the size of a T15 cell so when you set the controller to expect a T5 cell, the controller adjusts the conversion of amps to salt. Basically, it doubles the value.

So while the old cell was reading 1300 ppm @ 3.22 amps in T15 mode, in T5 mode should read around 2600 ppm. The unit does not shut off until 2400 ppm so you can extend the cell life a little bit. Just don't forget to switch back the mode when you go back to the new cell.

You might also try an acid bath for the OLD cell. One thing I discovered about failing cells is that they may look clean but there is a oxidized coating, basically rust, that reduces the current/production of the cell.

But going forward with your new cell, an acid bath is a last resort. To clean a cell, I use a bamboo skewer to pick off any scale. If I do use acid it is very diluted, 20 Baume 10:1. It takes longer to clean but I believe it is less harsh on the cell.
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Thank you Mark! I will give that a try.
 
BoxfordPool said:
Thank you Mark! I will give that a try.
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Ok so here is final update, hoping others can learn from this post as these swg’s are expensive and not very easy to work with.

I re-cleaned swg with 25% acid wash and that did not help, though my instant salt reading increased from 1300 to 1600. Next i changed to tcell-9 and salt reading jumped to 2900 and swg running again! I tried tcell-5 config but that increased salt reading to 3700, so put it back to tcell-9. I will keep it running for a week and see if any big changes to chlorine readings to known if it is actually working. Hopefully I can get more life from it.

Thanks so much to everyone on this forum for you help, greatly appreciated!
 
BoxfordPool said:
Ok so here is final update, hoping others can learn from this post as these swg’s are expensive and not very easy to work with.

I re-cleaned swg with 25% acid wash and that did not help, though my instant salt reading increased from 1300 to 1600.
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That means it improved the amps and the production so in my book, it did help.

BoxfordPool said:
Next i changed to tcell-9 and salt reading jumped to 2900 and swg running again! I tried tcell-5 config but that increased salt reading to 3700, so put it back to tcell-9.
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There is nothing wrong with displaying 3700 ppm as long as the unit does not alarm with high amps which it should not. On T-9, it will eventually drop to 2400 ppm at which point you will need to switch to T-5.
 
So it worked for about 1 day on the T-9 setting, then dropped salt reading below 2400 and shutdown again. I changed to T-5 and that worked for about 1 more day, then salt reading dropped again. So I got two more days of use is all, and went back to the new tcell. I guess in the end a bad cell is just a bad cell and not much more you can do other than replace it.
 
I have been running a T-15 cell on T-5 mode for almost a year now. I think there was clearly something wrong that was not due to normal aging.
 

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New Update. So the new salt generator provided by Hayward on warranty has been running fine for several weeks. Today the Low Salt reading started again. Test shows salt at 3600. What the heck is going on? Is my board bad and causing salt gen to fail? Any ideas what to do next?
 
UPDATE - so after one month of using a brand new warranty replacement from Hayward, the now new cell is started to read lower salt levels and "Low Salt" warnings appear on display panel again. What the heck is going on here?? Wondering is there something wrong with my board that is causing Cell to fail? Any thoughts greatly appreciated.
 
So just to confirm, the cell was working fine for a month but then started giving you issues? Was is it a gradual decline or rapid?

Can you post a full set of test results for the water? (CH,TA,PH,Salt,Water temperature,etc)

Also, can you post a picture of the inside of the cell, both sides?
 
Yes the cell was working fine for a month, and just recently started to gradually show lower salt each week, now to a low level that I know is wrong. Also, this thread started when my PRIOR new cell did the exact same thing, and was replaced with this new one on warranty. So it's really odd this would occur again so something (not the cell itself) must be causing it. I will get a water test today, but strip test show all results are good/normal.

I am thinking something must be wrong with the board and causing the cell to fail. Should I replace the board, or is there something on the board I can inspect?
 
BoxfordPool said:
I will get a water test today, but strip test show all results are good/normal.
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I would get a recommended test kit that includes a salt test. The salt test is K-1766. Link-->Test Kits Compared

Pool store and test strips are notoriously wrong. It is possible the cell is fine and your salt level is in fact low.

If your salt level has been going down, the cell would behave the way you are describing.
 
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Did you check for scale on the cell? This is why I asked about the specific test results. Drop kit test, not test strips.

Most of the board problems should show up immediately even with a new cell. The problem you have seems more like a cell issue and not a board issue because it degrades over time even when replacing the cell. Any board issue should not behave like that.

Even the cell chemistry would have to be way out bounds to cause the cell to fail that soon.
 

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