Pentair manual has a warning "Do not add any pool water balancing chemicals (including salt) unless theIntelliChlor SCG is switched off."

[Skenn81]

Never noticed this before as I never made it to the end of the manual. For adding chemicals I supposed to turn the SWG off? I have had mine for a year now and haven't turned it off since. Do they mean go flip the breaker and fully power it down or just turn the % to 0? Either way, this isn't anything I have done.

What's everyone else here do?

 

[kimkats]

I am in to learn from this one. @JoyfulNoise @ajw22 Thoughts?

I do know to not have the SWG turned on when you first add salt. You should give the salt time to mix in good before turning the SWG on. Otherwise you may be the low salt error.

 

[JoyfulNoise]

Nope. I don’t either except for the infrequent times when I have had to add salt. Salt takes a long time to dissolve and homogenize so to avoid high/low salt errors I just kept the SWG off until my salt test kit readings were stable. I add acid to the pool every 10-14 days and I never shutoff the SWG.

The problem is a lot of pool owners and service people that don’t know any better add chemicals directly to the skimmer. TFP teaches that doing that is huge No-No. TFP teaches the correct and safe way to add every kind of chemical. If you follow the TFP recommended methods, then you never have to worry about shutting off the SWG.

 

[ajw22]

You turn an IntelliChlor cell off by setting it to 0% so CELL light is off.

I have a 35,000 gallon pool and add salt to the deep end well away from the skimmers. If I am adding a bag or two of salt I don't lower the %. If I am adding 10+ bags at the beginning of the season I have the cell off since the salt level is too low to generate anyway.

That caution is there to keep you from spiking the salt level very high which can happen if the skimmer takes in a slug of high salinity water while the salt is dissolving. SWG cells volts and amps are proportional to the salinity and high salt level can cause the cell to get higher power then normal and damage it or blow fuses or burn boards or components.

You need to be more cautious if you have a 5,000 gallon pool that is 5' deep and add chemicals close to the skimmer then adding to a 40,000 gallon pool in the 9 foot deep area.

Pentair makes the broad statement about balancing chemicals rather then just salt because manufactuers hide salt in various mixes under fancy names - Bioguard Mineral Springs being one.

TL,DR - If you know what you are doing you can ignore that Pentair warning. If you are unsure about what you are adding to the pool then setting the % to 0 can protect the cell from possible damage.