NEW here - any Sea Water Pool owners

[playasonrisa]

We are expats living in Mexico on the Caribbean Sea. We are working with a professional pool company here, but I want to do my research anyway.
We are off-grid on solar and rainwater. We were told we could use the sea water to fill the pool. 11 x 23 ft half inground/half out
We were told that we didn't need to do anything other than make sure we had a good filter when we brought in the water, and the pump and sand filter would do the rest.
I am concerned about the organism that will be in the water and how to treat them if necessary.
I have read online somewhere that we could also use a salt chlorine generator to change the salt in the water to chlorine. (*not add salt or chlorine)
Anyone, have any experience with this? Fresh water is out of the question, as we would have to truck it in, and its very expensive here.
Thanks in advance.

 

[mknauss]

Welcome to the forum!
Typically available Salt Water Chlorine Generators use 3000 to 6000 ppm salinity. Yours will be in excess of 30000 ppm. I have never heard of a SWCG that can handle full on sea water, but there may be one out there.
Otherwise, you can use chlorine to sanitize the pool. You do not say what surface you are using.
I suggest you read through Pool Care Basics - Trouble Free Pool and even look at a few of our videos TFP-TV - Trouble Free Pool

 

[mknauss]

If you have readily available sea water, you could just circulate in fresh constantly. Then you would have little need of a sanitizer.

 

[AUSpool]

Sea water pools are normally tidal pools with large volumes of water exchanged daily. Trucking or pumping water won’t work.

I used to have sea water trucked in and stored for a salt aquarium. There is live organics in it and without sanitation stuff will grow. The amount of organics in it depends on the water conditions at collection. Without sanitation nasty things will grow. Not sea water nasty things but nasty things from human, animal, insect, bacterial, viral and general terrestrial origin.

So you will need sanitation and oxidation. The bio load will be too great to rely on natural oxygen for oxidation. Sea water is very roughly 10x more concentrated than the 4000-6000ppm needed for a saltwater chlorinator. Dilution will fix that but there is still a problem. Untreated sea water has bromide which will be a major problem for both liquid chlorine or a salt chlorinator.

I would manage it the same as any other pool but you will need to truck in water for the initial fill and use rainwater for topping up. You may need to increase you rain water storage capacity and/or be prepared to truck in water as required. I guess though that you have a reasonably high annual rain fall which works in your favor.