I think I finally got the SWG going (after months of struggle)

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Rq120

Rq120

Well-known member
May 3, 2019
108
Florida
We got a new Circupool Edge in December. Had trouble getting it dialed in until one day it didn't seem like it was making any chlorine. We did everything we needed to do to test it (ie ran it overnight, tried to test water directly from the returns, etc). Finally sent it back, tested it, and they replaced with a new one via warranty.

Fast forward to a month back. We get the new cell and start it up. It's working, but again can't get it dialed in. The chlorine dips too low so I have to shock the pool and I meet all the conditions that SLAM is all clear. SWG should be picking up chlorine needs and it's not. Pool gets slightly cloudy again so SLAM round 2.
NOW, finally, the SWG has been meeting chlorine needs and has been stable for 3 days. What a relief!
Yesterday I tested the CYA and it went from 60 to less than 20 in one month. Something must have "ate" the CYA? And maybe that explains all the issues from the last month. I was starting to believe I was bad luck for SWGs.
 
20 CYA will do what you saw in FL. Glad you caught it because you would have had the problem with LC too if you gave up on the SWG.
 
Yes, I knew I was due to check levels. I was going to boost CYA up a little, because I was keeping it a little low due to all the SLAMS. But was shocked that all my CYA disappeared in a month. Got my sock going right now. I'm just hoping I don't run into any more snags and it works. Been fighting this monster off and on since December. I want a TFP like everyone talks about with the SWG!
 
120,

I suspect the problem is not your new SWCG, but the fact that you are trying to be perfect in a less than perfect environment. :mrgreen:

This is a game of hand grenades, not darts.. Close is close enough.. Things change on a daily basis and there is no way to "dial the SWCG in" on a daily basis.. Look at the long term.. This is what I do...

I run my FC at my target or higher.. I do not try to keep my FC between the minimum and the target. I look at the minimum as death and I never want to get even close to it. This allows me to test less, but never worry about going too low.. If I slack off, and I drop a little below my target, I am still well above my minimum..

I guess my point is that too many things change to be able to get your SWCG dialed in on a daily basis, just quit driving yourself crazy.

Thanks,

Jim R.
 
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@Jimrahbe I didn't mean I was adjusting daily to get it perfect. I was just trying to find the right setting. Because the first cell wasn't working I would think I have the right setting and then it would drop a week later. So I would turn it up and then think I was ok, and it would drop. Until I couldn't keep it up at all. The first cell was tested and deemed faulty.

As for this round, I'm keeping it at 100% for 8 hours and it's been stable for 3 days. But I had trouble "dialing it in" to the right setting because of all the recurrent issues. I plan to do exactly what you describe, but I have to get there first and stop the compounding factors :)
 
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Jimrahbe said:
I run my FC at my target or higher.. I do not try to keep my FC between the minimum and the target. I look at the minimum as death and I never want to get even close to it.
Click to expand...

This right here is IMHO the most valuable piece of info on this forum. And also one heckuva analogy. Hey Newdude !!! Come peek off this cliff !! Nah, I've seen 100 already. No need to tempt fate. But you get your selfie though......... *has finger on cellphone ready to dial 911*


Now that you are fighting a fair fight Rq, it should go much easier for you. Once you get a feel for the system the way its supposed to work, you will enjoy that ease of use that we all talk about. Also this is the *perfect* example of somebody having problems with a conversion. You absolutely hate it and rightfully so. But its not the units fault. If you didnt catch the CYA issue, Your story would have been told to freinds who would retell your story so many times that the entire state of Texas would be afraid of SWGs
 
OMG, right! I kept saying, there is no way this SWG is faulty too. I have to give it a fair shake.
We have a local pool company that charges $50 a month and they install a SWG on every pool they maintenance. We have two friends that use them and their pool is always sparkling and pretty. So I know I could get there and it shouldn't have been that hard. But yes, a challenging conversion and I would assume most go smoother. I'm still excited about the prospect, because I hate the testing and lugging that comes with maintenance with LC.
 
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Rq120 said:
OMG, right! I kept saying, there is no way this SWG is faulty too. I have to give it a fair shake
Click to expand...
Most people wouldn’t. And their horror story would give the system a bad shake. Eventually 20 new people would come here to tell us how awful it is because they ‘heard about this guy’.
 
@mguzzy I haven't tested it yet. I added the equiv to 50ppm and will retest tomorrow. I'm sure I'll need some more. I have about a cups worth left that is SLOWLY dissolving. I mixed two brands of CYA. One was great and dissolved in one day, this second brand is taking forever, even with me going out there and squeezing it about 5 times per day.

Yes, we get a lot of summer rain where we are. However, the rainy season hasn't quite started and we are still dry at the moment. When I have to start draining my pool weekly I do check the CYA more often.

I thought about the quick CYA drop a little more yesterday. We had a well drilled in April. The kids were playing in the well water "fountain" and then would get the dirt rinsed off and would swim right after. I bet they brought in bacteria that ate the CYA (coupled with low FC levels of trying to get everything stabilized).
 

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I just installed a Circupool RJ30+ and I am pretty sure it is making little to no FC.. they are making me remove all my phosphates before they will do anything else, which I am in the process of. They tested a 650 ppb. What was your experience? What did you do with your poll while they had your cell?
 
djdonte said:
I just installed a Circupool RJ30+ and I am pretty sure it is making little to no FC.. they are making me remove all my phosphates before they will do anything else, which I am in the process of. They tested a 650 ppb. What was your experience? What did you do with your poll while they had your cell?
Click to expand...

We ordered via discount salt pools. We called them and after a bunch of troubleshooting efforts they agreed to issue us the paperwork to ship it back. When they did that they sent an empty cell bypass. We used the bypass until it shipped back, was tested and approved for replacement. It took several days of troubleshooting and multiple phone calls.

One step that we personally did was run it overnight to see the change in FC. We basically had no change of FC overnight with a cover on.
You could try doing a overnight chlorine loss one night and then run the SWG overnight a second night to compare levels. If you have a loss of less than 1ppm the first night then you would know you don't have something using your chlorine. Then you can run the SWG overnnight the second night and compare. Maybe that will help?

You will read posts here that if FC levels are correct then phosphates shouldn't matter.......
 
The ammonia thing does not happen often, but does happen. Generally for those in the frozen North that have to close their pools in the Winter.

I have three saltwater pools in the DFW area and they all work about the same.. If my CYA is 70 to 80 as the end of the Summer they all be be down to 40 or so in the early Spring.. I assume from rain dilution.. None of my pool have leaks, or maybe they all have leaks, but I'm pretty sure that is not the case...

Thanks,

Jim R.
 
My experience is the same as Jim's. I learned a lot about how to operate my salt by following his posts. Mad a lot of sense to run high side of target and with salt it's just as easy as running low since you don't have to do more jug-lugging. I'm much further south than he is but my CYA behaves almost identically. I was a little slow getting CYA where it belongs but the whole pool worked way better up in the 70-80 CYA level. It felt like my FC production was greater but it wasn't. It was just the loss was way less. Then after my first season of swg a couple months ago I tested CYA and got 50. It's still there and I notice on hot sunny days my FC level drops to about 6. I'm pretty certain when I get back up to the right level I'll have to reduce the SWG runtime. Then slowly increase during the summer.

Chris
 
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Rq120 said:
We ordered via discount salt pools. We called them and after a bunch of troubleshooting efforts they agreed to issue us the paperwork to ship it back. When they did that they sent an empty cell bypass. We used the bypass until it shipped back, was tested and approved for replacement. It took several days of troubleshooting and multiple phone calls.

One step that we personally did was run it overnight to see the change in FC. We basically had no change of FC overnight with a cover on.
You could try doing a overnight chlorine loss one night and then run the SWG overnight a second night to compare levels. If you have a loss of less than 1ppm the first night then you would know you don't have something using your chlorine. Then you can run the SWG overnnight the second night and compare. Maybe that will help?

You will read posts here that if FC levels are correct then phosphates shouldn't matter.......
Click to expand...
Thanks. I did exactly that before blaming the SWG and calling DSP. Passed several OCLT with zero loss, then ran my cell all night with zero rise in FC. Two different guys swore up and down phosphates are “using up the chlorine.” I tried to explain to them that phosphates don’t eat chlorine and if even if they were why would I pass a OCLT? They didn’t want to hear it and advised me to lower my phosphates under 100 before they want to do anything else. So now I’m in the process of clogging up my filters with phosfree. They were 650ppb btw. I know this isn’t right but I’m at their mercy right now. They claimed they receive almost 50 calls a day with my problem and it almost always phosphates.
 
Newdude said:
This right here is IMHO the most valuable piece of info on this forum. And also one heckuva analogy. Hey Newdude !!! Come peek off this cliff !! Nah, I've seen 100 already. No need to tempt fate. But you get your selfie though......... *has finger on cellphone ready to dial 911*


Now that you are fighting a fair fight Rq, it should go much easier for you. Once you get a feel for the system the way its supposed to work, you will enjoy that ease of use that we all talk about. Also this is the *perfect* example of somebody having problems with a conversion. You absolutely hate it and rightfully so. But its not the units fault. If you didnt catch the CYA issue, Your story would have been told to freinds who would retell your story so many times that the entire state of Texas would be afraid of SWGs
Click to expand...


I was keeping mine at 3 "min" and one day it dropped to almost 0 and wasn't going back up..Luckily I hit super chlorinate for 24 hours and it killed what ever was trying to take over..Now I keep it around 6.
Learned not to try that again. :)
 
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djdonte said:
Thanks. I did exactly that before blaming the SWG and calling DSP. Passed several OCLT with zero loss, then ran my cell all night with zero rise in FC. Two different guys swore up and down phosphates are “using up the chlorine.” I tried to explain to them that phosphates don’t eat chlorine and if even if they were why would I pass a OCLT? They didn’t want to hear it and advised me to lower my phosphates under 100 before they want to do anything else. So now I’m in the process of clogging up my filters with phosfree. They were 650ppb btw. I know this isn’t right but I’m at their mercy right now. They claimed they receive almost 50 calls a day with my problem and it almost always phosphates.
Click to expand...

So......this is what DSP also told me to do. I took my water to the pool store to get tested for phosphates and it was 500 or something like that. After some research on TFP and my own troubleshooting, we just lied to DSP and told them the phosphates tested negative :censored: so we could get past that step in troubleshooting. I have seen someone on here where either DSP or Circupool required them to mail in a water sample!
Our SWG DID work at initial install. Then production kept falling over months until it seemed like it was barely producing at all.

Upon restarting with the new cell, I didn't expect such a tough conversion. I can see how DSP has to be careful with troubleshooting. If I didn't give it a fair shake this time, I would assume I got another faulty cell. It sounds like you are taking the right steps. Its just a long, drawn out process to convince them. I hope you get it all figured out!
 

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