Installed New Circupool Edge 40

[markayash]

I installed the Edge40 but have bypass cell in place for now. Wanted to make sure no issues or leaks..
Water is still 58 degree's so not sure it would even kick on

I redid all my plumbing from heater out to make it fit so took a little longer then normal but very straight forward.. If you can cut PVC you can install it

Anything I need to change?

FC 5
pH 7.4
TA 80
CH 400
CYA 60 ( I know it needs raising some but have grown to hate CYA )
Salt 3800

 

[ajw22]

CYA 60 is ok to start with. See how it works in your pool environment.

Get your FC up to 7-9 until you get your SWG cranking.

 

[kimkats]

Have you put the salt in the water yet? If not or the next time you add any make sure everyone is in the pool so they can have a "diamond day" The salt is so pretty as it floats down. They also help mix it in while have fun!

 

[markayash]

Yes did salt earlier, I did notice it seemed to climb over time. Was 3600 few weeks ago.
It’s making chlorine, not complaining about temp so far
Still have a little wire cleanup to do, but turned out nice so far

 

[Holydoc]

I agree totally with AJW. Raise that FC level until your SWG is operational. No reason to worry about algae while we are preparing for swim season.
Settings like the TA and CYA will need to be played with once you get your SWG up and going. I find a lower TA of around 60 (mine is 70 currently) helps keep my pH from rising too quickly. Like you, I am a bit fearful of my CYA (I used pucks before I got a SWG) so I like to let it creep down to about 60 by the end of swim season (we have a lot of rain here). I will raise it during the winter with pucks once my SWG kicks off.

 

[markayash]

I have been watching the watts of the Circupool Edge40 ( engineering brain )..It pulls about 14 watts when it's idling and wide open " boost" jumps to around 210 watts.

The Dolphin Active 20 pulls around 105 watts running

 

[markayash]

It’s working, I set it to 50% and just using basic Taylor kit it want from around 4 or 5 to bring yellow guessing around 8 to 10.
Dropped SWG down to around 25% and see how that does.
Pollen season starting in Atlanta so it can go bad quickly. Hopefully now with a steady feed I won’t have to worry

 

[kimkats]

SWEET!!!! Has to be nice to set and forget mostly! A SWG is on our short list to buy this Spring! I can't wait!

 

[markayash]

SWEET!!!! Has to be nice to set and forget mostly! A SWG is on our short list to buy this Spring! I can't wait!

I put it off for at least a year maybe more..Hard for me to spend $900 so I won't have to add Chlorine..But I was calculated I was spending $200 a year on Tablets and shock. But my biggest reason is to make it easier to manage AT least 2 or 3 times a year I let it slip and goes from clean to green in a couple days and then I spend the next week clearing it up.

I set my SWG timer to run form 11pm until 7am. Our power is suppose to be less so why not..If I need more I can adjust

 

[Rattus Suffocatus]

So your final install turned out to be very neat. Nice job! I think I will end up pulling the trigger soon.. as soon as I get the pool stable at a lower TA than I have now (120-130 depending on the day so really probably 125)... (TA is terribly high in our water here). But your previous posts and current post sure has given me encouragement on this. So your water is at about 60F and it's okay with that? Good to know. We are up to 66F here so if I plan on doing it this season I should probably get on it.

Again, I was set to order it before the zombie apocalypse happened, and then spending $800-1000 became mentally much more challenging.... But I still think it's the way to go overall. I'd like to not have to tend to the pool in the summer but every third day or so and even be able to easily recover from a week of neglect and this seems the best way, honestly.

 

[markayash]

Some people said theirs wouldn't come on but if my pool heater is correct is was 59 and it kicked right in.
I am still learning where to set it at, have on high and went from 0 to around 8 in less than a day so I moved it to 20% and chlorine dropped to 1 BUT it's heavy pollen season and we got a LOT of rain so bumping up some

I am trying to find something out and Circupool told me not to worry about it just set it and leave it alone but my engineering brain is bugging me...My smart plug measures watts, the higher I turn up the power the more amps it draws, lowest is around 20watts and highest is around 210 watts..BUT it never seems to stop.
My understanding from other posts was it either on or off and the percentage controls how long in a time frame it runs..I am not seeing that with the edge, the power changs the amp's/watts.

 

[Newdude]

This is the drawback of the units that only change by 20% intervals. (Or worse for the 25s). A lot of times you need a runtime that’s in between the two settings and need to adjust the pump runtime to reach the desired result.

I run 24/7 and find that 9 times out of 10 I am going to be on the high side of the target range. (Fine by me). If it starts to go even higher, I will go to a lesser % and check every other day to know when to adjust up again. Within a week we get warmer temps or lots of spring rain and it needs a bump one way or the other.

 

[Rattus Suffocatus]

Well, as an engineer I assume at sometime in you life you hooked up a DC power supply and an anode and cathode up and made a test tube full of Hydrogen and Oxygen (and if you were me, mixed them together and propelled something with it.) The overall idea of the salt chlorine cell is similar but it controls the reaction by the rare earth metals and how it manipulates the current waveform to make Hydrogen and chlorine gas instead. But just like when, like me, you turned the supply up from 12V to 40V to get the current up and the gas production up, the power draw went up as well (and IIRC not linearly to production either). As a young prospective-at-the-time engineer having the explosion propel the test tube through the suspended ceiling was considered a success but in your pool cell you don't want that to happen, so that is why the flow control/timer shutoff is important!

So since you are forcing a backwards reaction by electrolysis it makes sense the more chlorine you have the cell produce the higher the power requirements.

I am not sure but that likely is another reason to oversize the cell, it likely could be more efficient being oversized. I imagine there is an expert here who will tell me if I am right or wrong. It's actually interesting that these cells don't list a measure of efficiency on them. (Or any useful data for that matter like the size of the darned unit!) What you probably want to compare is your VS pump power consumption versus the cell consumption because you could probably optimize chlorine generation by power and time on if you wanted to, but of course, proper filtration would also come into the equation so the ideal point is the system of all three equations and unknowns...

I would hope your cell does shut down (the flow switch and/or timer) because you don't want that test tube in the ceiling in this case! When it is powered up I imagine it is doing something like a PWM to the cell which is getting averaged out in your kill-a-watt. If it's on you should see power draw. If you are on, drawing current when the water isn't flowing adequately... stop.....

 

[markayash]

I don't really measure to optimize it I added a smart plug so I can use the timer feature. So if I set it at 25% it will draw more power and still turn off every so often then say 10%..
I guess my question is on a normal Rj series does it draw 2amp run for 90 minutes then cut off for 90 minutes when it set to 50%.

Right now I have it at 25% with no timer, had it set to 10% and my chlorine was at 1.

When I am locked in my house ( in thoery ) I sit around and think about stuff I work in IT and we are in a self-imposed change freeze, nobody wants to be the guy who takes down VPN when everybody is home

 

[Rattus Suffocatus]

Have you thought of e-mailing CircuPool? I mean that doesn't sound like a trade secret*. But from what I am gathering by reading how they actually work, there is extruded (bigger surface area) titanium plates in them that generate the gases via electrolysis. I suspect bigger cells have bigger plate area. The rare earth metals are deposited on the titanium and supposedly without those being on them they would only last 6 months, but this rare earth metal greatly increases their life span, apparently by more than just replacing the plates more often. This is why I've more or less decided a 10,000 hour $350 replacement cell might be more desirable than a 15,000 hour $550 cell... it's a trade off....

I really think the "on time" is "on time" in these cells. Meaning they do not cycle on and off. Your measurements seem to infer that.

The percentage control either is changing the voltage/current (power) or is doing a PWM on the voltage/current (when on at full potential but for a varying pulse) which looks like it. *If you have an oscilloscope in your collection of toys it would be very easy to figure out the waveform going into the cells with a high impedance probe. You'll see voltage this way, but you can probably work it backwards to figure out current (or put a 0.1- 1 ohm several watt power resistor in series and then look at THAT with the scope.)

I am an "essential" employee according to Uncle Sam, so I really only had today to even get online. I have been as busy as I have ever been in my career-- worse since this hit. I'm doing a lot of time consuming testing today... so I used the down wait time to catch up here... but... sigh.. busy.. busy...

 

[markayash]

I did but they really didn't get into any details other then " you don't need to measure amp's and call us with more questions
Am I misunderstanding that other cells are on or off and just cycle time?

I work in IT for a media company so we are essential and got our badges and letters but they haven't locked us down completely yet,...I just have made the choice to stay home and away from people

You control it by two main things: the power setting (chlorine output) that you set it for, and the amount of time you let it run. You can refer to the bottom of page 9 and following pages of the attached manual for more detail. There is no need to measure watts, simply test the “free chlorine” in the pool, and make adjustments to the power setting as needed, and increasing or decreasing run time set on your timer as a secondary means of adjustment.

By familiarizing yourself with the operation of the EDGE
-
SERIES, you can achieve the maximum performance for your pool.
There are three main factors that you can control which directly impact the resulting free chlorine level in the pool:
1) The chosen percentage of Chlorine Output on the Control Module
2) Hours of pump run-time each day
3) Water chemistry balance
- Including the amount of salt in the pool and chemicals that affect chlorine demand, such as chlorine stabilizer,
phosphates, nitrates, and more. See "Ideal Chemistry Levels" on page 8 for more important information.
After making the initial adjustments to your chosen Chlorine Output level, additional adjustments are typically only necessary
due to changing seasonal temperatures, or changes in pool use and bather load. Like any pool, ensure that your pump runs long
enough for all the pool water to pass through the filter 1.5x to 2x a day (usually at least 8 hours). This is amount of time is
typically more than sufficient for chlorination of the pool, but if the pool has high chlorine demand, running the pool pump
longer allows for more chlorination. Measure your water chemistry and chlorine level on a regular basis.

 

[ajw22]

There are different power management techniques the SWG manufacturers use to control the generation %. Some just power the cell on and off. Others vary the voltage and amperage to get the desired %. We see the SWGs sold in Australia have very different power management design. I haven't tried to keep track of where Circupool products are sourced from but I am sure it is an overseas product branded Circupool for the US market.

 

[Rattus Suffocatus]

They claim the cells are made in the US but I think the controllers are from China. I've been doing a lot of research on them. Look on eBay and you see a lot of Hayward (and therefore Universal and Si) style units from China... replacement cells, etc. I would guess cell final assembly and testing is here but that is enough to quality (especially if they say with foreign components).

It is simple electrolysis and any of the aforementioned methods would work. Circupool is a high quality unit apparently, and I would guess they use a method of keeping the cell on all the time it is activated because IMHO that would be the best way of doing it. Certainly better than "bang-bang"....

 

[markayash]

Almost everything is made in China these days Even American made stuff has a lot of parts from China

 

[JonoVegas]

I understand that 220 is "more efficient" than 110, BUT is that really a practical difference. I ask because installing a CircuPool RJ45+ this week-end and I understand I can power this at 220 OR 110. If the 220 vs 110 effeciency isn't really material than I may choose 110 as the 110 timers are much cheaper than the 220 and also the 110 option could include some wifi type plugs as an option for my wiring task. Not sure yet if I want to go mechanical timer or wifi timer as there are some pro's / con's on that choice as well.