Noob Help - Missing check valve?

[cs2xzst]

Hi, I just bought my first house with a pool. Never had a pool before. Home warranty replaced the salt cell. The pool tech who told me that I needed a new cell replaced it. Today they replaced the cell but now says I am missing a check valve and need it @ $275. Or else my heater will be damaged.

this is an older house so I don’t know how they would not have put one in.
Any advice?

 

[Jimrahbe]

CS,

Your pool guy does not have a glue what he is talking about.. If you have a tab feeder you MUST have a check valve... If all you have is a salt cell, there is just no reason to have a check valve..

The check valve is there to prevent low pH from tab feeder's tablets from feeding back into the heater.. When a salt cell is off, it is off, there is nothing to flow back into the heater.

Thanks,

Jim R.

 

[cs2xzst]

Thank you Jim! I figured he was trying to make money off me since I don’t know anything about pools.

Thank God. Now I just need to dump salt in the pool and dump the chlorine.

CS,

Your pool guy does not have a glue what he is talking about.. If you have a tab feeder you MUST have a check valve... If all you have is a salt cell, there is just no reason to have a check valve..

The check valve is there to prevent low pH from tab feeder's tablets from feeding back into the heater.. When a salt cell is off, it is off, there is nothing to flow back into the heater.

Thanks,

Jim R.

 

[Dirk]

I took out my check valve when I swapped the feeder for the new SWG. Just to rub a little salt in it (get it?), you can get a very nice check valve on Amazon for 50 bucks. So he was going to charge you $225 for a ten minute PVC glue job, for something you didn't need. At least it didn't cost you anything to learn who not to call next time!

Welcome to the pool industry.

And welcome to TFP. Glad you found us. And kudos to you for checking here first. The more you ask and learn here, the more money you'll save!

 

[Jimrahbe]

Now I just need to dump salt in the pool and dump the chlorine.

CS,

Just to make sure you understand... A saltwater pool is a chlorine pool.. the salt cell just uses the salt in the pool water to make chlorine. So, when you say "dump the chlorine" I just want to make sure that you understand that you will still need to maintain your chlorine (FC) in relationship to your stablizer (CYA).. per the saltwater section of this chart.. FC/CYA Levels

Thanks,

Jim R.

 

[Dirk]

SWGs are great for maintaining your FC level. But they're not very good at moving FC from one level to another. I always have a few gallons of liquid chlorine (LC) on hand just for that reason. Sometimes I'll need to goose the FC quickly, like right before or after a big pool party. The SWG can't really do that. Plus, while first figuring out the setting to use for an SWG, it goes a lot quicker if you have some LC on hand:
- Use the FC/CYA Chart to determine your FC target
- Test FC at a specific time of day
- Use LC to bring the FC to your target
- Set pump runtime and SWG setting*
- Test the FC the next day at the same time
- If FC is high, decrease pump runtime and/or SWG setting
- If FC is low, use LC to bring the FC back up to your target and increase pump runtime and/or SWG setting

You keep repeating that process at the same time each day until your SWG maintains your FC. Without LC to restore your FC target each day, you'll be raising and lowering the SWG setting like crazy and it'll take way longer to finally find the right setting to maintain FC.

* If you fill in your signature with details of your pool (read the link below), so that we know your pool size and type of SWG, etc, we can help you ballpark the initial pump runtime and SWG settings, to get you started.

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