This has now been a month long scavenger hunt to multiple pool stores and I'm still not 100% sure what the issue is.
We have a 6 month old salt plaster pool (details in signature) and everything was great for a few months. We could keep the SWG down to around 18% and the chlorine levels stayed stable (it's a small pool), until about a month ago when I noticed it seemed like chlorine levels were dipping. I took the cell apart (t9) thinking it must be covered in deposits, and there was minor scaling but really not bad at all compared to some photos of other cells I've seen. I was surprised because this part of Florida has pretty hard water, the hardness test strips are showing around 450... Anyways, I clean it and put it back in expecting my problem to be solved... I was wrong. I still couldn't get any chlorine reading. At this point I tried switching from AUTO to SUPER and tested the chlorine at the end of the day, at this point it read very little but at least detectable, but when kept on AUTO, at as high as 70%, it is not producing anything detectable and it's only a small pool (~8500g). Voltage reading was 27.6 when generating. Amps read 4.5. There were no error lights that have ever turned on for me to chase down. The cell is clean, it says generating, but clearly it isn't?
So then I brought a water sample to the pool store (results attached), they said my salt was low (2448). This is when I realized that the SWG reading was inaccurate to the upside by ~400ppm. The store manager said yup this is your issue, add this bag and you should be back in business. I added a whole bag and then confirmed that salt level was 3400 via test strip. I also noticed, even though the pool store manager didn't say anything about it, that my stabilizer level was in the low 50's and everything I've read says that salt pools need higher CYA levels so I added a whole container of dry stabilizer also thinking that HAS to solve the issue, stabilizer now reads around 70-75. A couple days later, I am STILL having this issue!!??? I keep having to add liquid chlorine to my pool and it's gone within a day and a half (not sure if that's normal or not). The one thing I just noticed today.... it gets a little better when I run the pump at a higher speed. When the pool was first set up the maxflo vs500 was running at like 2750rpm all day. One thing I'm thinking about now is that about a month ago I reprogrammed it to run for an hour @ 2250 and then for 8 hours @ 1750rpm. I'm thinking it's got to be more than a coincidence that this problem started around the same general time that I lowered the pump speed??
But why?? I've heard of people running salt water systems at waayyy lower speeds and not having trouble generating chlorine. Is it possible that the hayward aquarite 900 really just requires that high of a flow rate to generate chlorine in my setup? Why would that be? The other thing is, even at low speeds I can plainly see chlorine gas bubbles coming from the return, but when I measure at that spot I get no reading. I'm experimenting today with higher pump speed to see if that does help.
What gives? Does anybody have any idea what is going on??
PS... When I put liquid chlorine in the pool and measure later on, there isn't really any gap between free and total chlorine levels, and water looks clear, so I don't believe it's a chlorine demand issue.
We have a 6 month old salt plaster pool (details in signature) and everything was great for a few months. We could keep the SWG down to around 18% and the chlorine levels stayed stable (it's a small pool), until about a month ago when I noticed it seemed like chlorine levels were dipping. I took the cell apart (t9) thinking it must be covered in deposits, and there was minor scaling but really not bad at all compared to some photos of other cells I've seen. I was surprised because this part of Florida has pretty hard water, the hardness test strips are showing around 450... Anyways, I clean it and put it back in expecting my problem to be solved... I was wrong. I still couldn't get any chlorine reading. At this point I tried switching from AUTO to SUPER and tested the chlorine at the end of the day, at this point it read very little but at least detectable, but when kept on AUTO, at as high as 70%, it is not producing anything detectable and it's only a small pool (~8500g). Voltage reading was 27.6 when generating. Amps read 4.5. There were no error lights that have ever turned on for me to chase down. The cell is clean, it says generating, but clearly it isn't?
So then I brought a water sample to the pool store (results attached), they said my salt was low (2448). This is when I realized that the SWG reading was inaccurate to the upside by ~400ppm. The store manager said yup this is your issue, add this bag and you should be back in business. I added a whole bag and then confirmed that salt level was 3400 via test strip. I also noticed, even though the pool store manager didn't say anything about it, that my stabilizer level was in the low 50's and everything I've read says that salt pools need higher CYA levels so I added a whole container of dry stabilizer also thinking that HAS to solve the issue, stabilizer now reads around 70-75. A couple days later, I am STILL having this issue!!??? I keep having to add liquid chlorine to my pool and it's gone within a day and a half (not sure if that's normal or not). The one thing I just noticed today.... it gets a little better when I run the pump at a higher speed. When the pool was first set up the maxflo vs500 was running at like 2750rpm all day. One thing I'm thinking about now is that about a month ago I reprogrammed it to run for an hour @ 2250 and then for 8 hours @ 1750rpm. I'm thinking it's got to be more than a coincidence that this problem started around the same general time that I lowered the pump speed??
But why?? I've heard of people running salt water systems at waayyy lower speeds and not having trouble generating chlorine. Is it possible that the hayward aquarite 900 really just requires that high of a flow rate to generate chlorine in my setup? Why would that be? The other thing is, even at low speeds I can plainly see chlorine gas bubbles coming from the return, but when I measure at that spot I get no reading. I'm experimenting today with higher pump speed to see if that does help.
What gives? Does anybody have any idea what is going on??
PS... When I put liquid chlorine in the pool and measure later on, there isn't really any gap between free and total chlorine levels, and water looks clear, so I don't believe it's a chlorine demand issue.
