Disclaimer: I knew nothing about pools a few weeks ago and probably still don't. But thanks to everyone here at TFP, I at least feel like I'm headed in the right direction. Thanks!
I'm in the process of having an in-ground lap pool built in Northern California. It will be 75' x 12' with 30K gallons. Hopefully will be using it year round, so will definitely be covered.
Every professional I've talked to including the pool designer, builder, limestone supplier and cover manufacturer have all tried to steer me away from SWG. Thanks to this site, I haven't accepted the advice. However, I don't want to completely ignore their advice, so I'm wondering about the following idea:
Can I run a low-salt SWG, e.g. Hayward AcquaRite XL Low Salt W/ 30K Cell, and supplement with bleach when needed? The pool will always be covered when not in use, so not a lot of sun exposure. For much of the year it will be only used infrequently for lap swimming. This leads me to believe that for much of the year the chlorine demand will be low and a low-salt SWG would be sufficient. I understand that normally a 60K cell would be recommended, but this 30K cell is the only low-salt one I've seen, and hoping that for my use case it will mostly be sufficient.
The benefits i see with low-salt SWG are:
I understand that there's nothing that keeps you from using bleach with SWG, but my real question is can I automate it all. I want the automation to rely on the low-salt SWG for most of the time, but when needed, add bleach to supplement. And in particular is anyone running their pool like this? The automation systems I've looked at seem to only control one chlorine source and can't deal with multiple sources and the idea of primary/secondary sources.
Hope this make some sense. Can someone help with how I would do this, or why this is all a bad idea?
Thanks..
I'm in the process of having an in-ground lap pool built in Northern California. It will be 75' x 12' with 30K gallons. Hopefully will be using it year round, so will definitely be covered.
Every professional I've talked to including the pool designer, builder, limestone supplier and cover manufacturer have all tried to steer me away from SWG. Thanks to this site, I haven't accepted the advice. However, I don't want to completely ignore their advice, so I'm wondering about the following idea:
Can I run a low-salt SWG, e.g. Hayward AcquaRite XL Low Salt W/ 30K Cell, and supplement with bleach when needed? The pool will always be covered when not in use, so not a lot of sun exposure. For much of the year it will be only used infrequently for lap swimming. This leads me to believe that for much of the year the chlorine demand will be low and a low-salt SWG would be sufficient. I understand that normally a 60K cell would be recommended, but this 30K cell is the only low-salt one I've seen, and hoping that for my use case it will mostly be sufficient.
The benefits i see with low-salt SWG are:
- Less potential for corrosion problems. I know many dismiss these concerns, but given how much concern I've heard from non-interested parties, I feel like there's non-zero risk here, in particular for the automatic pool cover. If I could run the pool at 1500 ppm, this won't be that different from a normal bleach pool with salt build up over time.
- The water shouldn't have a perceptibly salty taste, as opposed to normal SWG running at 3000+ ppm which does taste salty to some, including me.
I understand that there's nothing that keeps you from using bleach with SWG, but my real question is can I automate it all. I want the automation to rely on the low-salt SWG for most of the time, but when needed, add bleach to supplement. And in particular is anyone running their pool like this? The automation systems I've looked at seem to only control one chlorine source and can't deal with multiple sources and the idea of primary/secondary sources.
Hope this make some sense. Can someone help with how I would do this, or why this is all a bad idea?
Thanks..
