also i put 1.1kg of stabilizer in pool sock suspended in from of return, it was dissolved that day Friday by afternoon after a bit of squeezing , so been circulating all Saturday and Sunday now...
Startup SWG chlorinator salt for new pool
- Thread starter FIESTA62
- Start date
- Nov 12, 2017
- 11,842
- Pool Size
- 12300
- Surface
- Plaster
- Chlorine
- Salt Water Generator
- SWG Type
- Pentair Intellichlor IC-40
I suppose excess FC can irritate eyes. So keeping FC in range (based on CYA) is always best. But the more likely culprits are either pH or CC. CC being the most likely. If your kids are peeing in the pool, and generating CC as the chlorine goes to work, that might be what's going on. So monitor all three: FC, pH and CC and keep them all in range for a comfortable pool.
If you can "smell chlorine," that's actually CC off-gassing, which is a tell tale sign that there might be some peeing going on. That's what's so gross about public pools! You smell chlorine and think "Ah, good, lots of chlorine!" Nope, lots of pee!
Remember, there are only two types of people. Those that pee in pools and those that lie about it!
If you can "smell chlorine," that's actually CC off-gassing, which is a tell tale sign that there might be some peeing going on. That's what's so gross about public pools! You smell chlorine and think "Ah, good, lots of chlorine!" Nope, lots of pee!
Remember, there are only two types of people. Those that pee in pools and those that lie about it!
Last edited:
- Nov 12, 2017
- 11,842
- Pool Size
- 12300
- Surface
- Plaster
- Chlorine
- Salt Water Generator
- SWG Type
- Pentair Intellichlor IC-40
Yah, so it went right into the pool and so shouldn't take more than a day to show up. You can make it two to play is safe.
today was there first swim after the slam, only in for about 90 minutes, CC and PH are perfect, i guess its the CYA v FC i need to balance, more tweaking the settings....i will check back in after some trial and error
- Nov 12, 2017
- 11,842
- Pool Size
- 12300
- Surface
- Plaster
- Chlorine
- Salt Water Generator
- SWG Type
- Pentair Intellichlor IC-40
Lots of splashing and jumping in and swimming under water and rubbing eyes might be all this is...
All those actions, even wiping eyes with a towel, can pump pool water back through tear ducts, causing irritation. Even the most balanced pool water will do that... Swim goggles and not rubbing eyes and patting them dry instead of rubbing can help.
All those actions, even wiping eyes with a towel, can pump pool water back through tear ducts, causing irritation. Even the most balanced pool water will do that... Swim goggles and not rubbing eyes and patting them dry instead of rubbing can help.
- Oct 25, 2015
- 5,145
- Pool Size
- 25000
- Surface
- Plaster
- Chlorine
- Salt Water Generator
- SWG Type
- CircuPool RJ-60 Plus
Fiesta,
Glad to see things are settling down for you. My pH was tough to manage for the first year. Was adding acid almost every day. It does settle down after a while just from aging of the surface. Letting your TA drop to 80 helps. Many (like me) even let it drop to 50. There a few other things you can do if this doesn't help pH stability but for most people this gets you down to weekly or less for acid addition. Also, I'll pass along some of the best advice I got from and expert here on swg which is don't micro manage FC level. It drives you nuts. Let FC float up and down a couple ppm above target. It's fine to go on the high side a little. If you find your pool is extremely sensitive to run time you may want to drop % power a notch and adjust run time. Your chlorinator is just right for your pool but when we say that it's sized for 2x or more volume. This means when you start you may be as low as 50% power depending on run time. When swg cells are brand new catalyst activity can be very high for new units but will drop off and level out at design level pretty quickly. My pool is a little bigger than yours and my FC production is a little less. Since installation a little over 2 years ago, I've been at 50% power and run time ranges from 3 to 8 hours. I only adjust run time a couple times per year. Sometimes I'm about 3 ppm above target and then it drifts down to target. CYA test once per month is plenty for me, I only add once or twice during summer. I'm in S Florida so we get our share of piping hot summer but I do also have an enclosure that helps reduce the sun. I'm sure you're a little more sun so you'll cycle a little more than me but not much. One of the main things I have to watch out for is chemical loss when we get our monsoon like rain storms. It's amazing how much salt and CYA can be lost. I also keep my salt higher in the range (~3800 ppm). And I've learned after 4 downpours to check CYA and salt... By then I'm usually below mid point and can add a bag plus put about half a sock of CYA in. Your pool will be different but once you get to know your pool and how it reacts maintenance will be easy peasy.
I hope this helps.
Chris
Glad to see things are settling down for you. My pH was tough to manage for the first year. Was adding acid almost every day. It does settle down after a while just from aging of the surface. Letting your TA drop to 80 helps. Many (like me) even let it drop to 50. There a few other things you can do if this doesn't help pH stability but for most people this gets you down to weekly or less for acid addition. Also, I'll pass along some of the best advice I got from and expert here on swg which is don't micro manage FC level. It drives you nuts. Let FC float up and down a couple ppm above target. It's fine to go on the high side a little. If you find your pool is extremely sensitive to run time you may want to drop % power a notch and adjust run time. Your chlorinator is just right for your pool but when we say that it's sized for 2x or more volume. This means when you start you may be as low as 50% power depending on run time. When swg cells are brand new catalyst activity can be very high for new units but will drop off and level out at design level pretty quickly. My pool is a little bigger than yours and my FC production is a little less. Since installation a little over 2 years ago, I've been at 50% power and run time ranges from 3 to 8 hours. I only adjust run time a couple times per year. Sometimes I'm about 3 ppm above target and then it drifts down to target. CYA test once per month is plenty for me, I only add once or twice during summer. I'm in S Florida so we get our share of piping hot summer but I do also have an enclosure that helps reduce the sun. I'm sure you're a little more sun so you'll cycle a little more than me but not much. One of the main things I have to watch out for is chemical loss when we get our monsoon like rain storms. It's amazing how much salt and CYA can be lost. I also keep my salt higher in the range (~3800 ppm). And I've learned after 4 downpours to check CYA and salt... By then I'm usually below mid point and can add a bag plus put about half a sock of CYA in. Your pool will be different but once you get to know your pool and how it reacts maintenance will be easy peasy.
I hope this helps.
Chris
PH hasn't been much of a issue, it was 7.6 at last test it seems to hold pretty good i don't add acid much, but TA has risen to 120 recently, it was usually around 80 so not sure if its going to keep rising for whatever reason, and if that's going to cause issues, but at this pint PH has not been much problem
it this FC that i cant seem to get stable, but i am really onto testing and keeping a record now, i now know 5 hours at 100% causes FC to rise, it went from 7.5 then next day 8, than next day 9
i checked last night and this morning and got FC9 both tests so no CC , no overnight loss, i am leaving SWG off today to let it drift down to 6 or 7, problem turn back on tomorrow morning to test 4 hours at 100%
i am not sure of FC target yet as i have not confirmed CYA level, i am going to test CYA tomorrow too, just giving recently added CYA a bit more time to fully circulate
i would like to see CYA 70 and target FC 5.....but letting it range up to 7 max
might just buy a lagoon 45 and sail off into the sunset.....dreaming but u never know, thanks for the info.
- Oct 25, 2015
- 5,145
- Pool Size
- 25000
- Surface
- Plaster
- Chlorine
- Salt Water Generator
- SWG Type
- CircuPool RJ-60 Plus
Lagoon 45 into the sunset sounds pretty good! My wife and I did that on a Manta 42 for most of 6 years.
I let all my pools rise above target 1 or 2 points. No damage there but rather great insurance against algae.
Last edited:
yes i figure 1 or 2 max above, but until i know my CYA level i am not sure of target will test tomorrow....
- Mar 5, 2020
- 3,007
- Pool Size
- 66000
- Surface
- Plaster
- Chlorine
- Salt Water Generator
- SWG Type
- Astral Viron V35
Key for my sanity really was to not worry about FC creeping up. I generally keep my FC on the higher side, above 8ppm for CYA 80ppm. SWG dialled in to maintain this level on mostly sunny days. If we get cloudy weather, FC will start to creep up, might get above 10 after a couple of days. Once the sun is back, FC will go down again - UV loss is pretty much a percentage of the FC level, so the system is kind of self regulating and will reach an equilibrium after a couple of days with the same weather. Should the cloudy weather persist, then I will turn the SWG down. I can adjust the SWG in 1/8 steps (i.e. 12.5%). I adjusted my run time so that one step corresponds to 0.5ppm chlorine production, that allows easy adjustment without much calculation.
At the beginning of this season I also did some tracking of my chlorine and correlated the chlorine losses to the weather conditions (sunny, partly cloudy or deep grey - I actually calculated the total UV-load from an Internet UV-tracker, but that's the Geek in me). If I know how much my FC changed in a day and how much the SWG created, I can calculate how much chlorine I lost over the day. I tracked that as a percentage of the current FC.
When plotting this percentage over the "sunnyness", I got a "slanted cloud", which gave me an average FC loss depending on weather. There is of course a variation depending on bather load that is reflected in the cloud. Or just the test-resolution of 0.5ppm per drop. Now I know that on a sunny day I will loose on average about 20% of my chlorine in a day, on a partly cloudy day maybe 15%, and on a fully cloudy day maybe 10% (all of that with CYA around 80ppm). So, with FC in the order of 10ppm and my chlorinator "bars" going in 0.5ppm steps, the settings of interest will be daily chlorine productions of 1ppm, 1.5ppm and 2ppm.
Let's say I set my SWG on 1.5ppm daily production and my CYA is 80ppm. Having some average cloudiness will give me a UV-chlorine need of about 15% per day - that means I will reach equilibrium at FC=10ppm where the chlorine need matches the chlorine produced by the SWG (both 1.5ppm). Should it stay sunny with a chlorine need more like 20%, equilibrium will be reached around 7.5ppm (just above the SWG target-FC). Should the sun not show up at all for days, with a chlorine need more towards 10%, equilibrium will be at 15ppm (still well below SLAM-FC of 31ppm). Great - I found SWG settings that will keep FC in an acceptable range. If it stays sunny, I will stay above 7.5ppm, but I won't go above 15ppm. In that whole range I never got any complaints, no stinging eyes, no chlorine smell. Yes, if my son stays with friends in the pool for the whole day, his eyes will show some reaction - but that is completely independent from the actual FC, same thing happened in pre-TFP times when aiming for an FC below 3ppm.
If it stays really sunny for longer periods, I up my SWG to 2ppm chlorine production per day. Water will get warmer, kids hang out in the pool more often and for longer, much higher bather load. Should the sun be hidden behind dark clouds for days, I might go down to 1ppm per day for a while. Generally, I am trying to keep FC around 8-9ppm, by occasionally going up or down one SWG "bar" (in my SWG I only program the run times, the chlorine production is a manual setting that I can easily change without going through the menu).
At some point, chlorine need might be higher than expected, and a CYA test will reveal that it's time for a CYA-top-up. That's another reason for a healthy buffer towards min-FC.
Now the days are getting shorter, sun-angle noticeably lower, and chlorine-need starts to get lower. Time to reduce the pump run-times a bit to make my default 1.5ppm per day maybe 1.4 or 1.3ppm.
For the first 3 years of pool ownership, I just did trial-and-error. I also tried to stay within the industry recommended range of 1ppm to 3ppm, based on strip testing and a monthly or fortnightly test at the pool shop. I pretty quickly realised that 1ppm is a really bad idea, I constantly had to brush algae off the side walls. Water never turned really cloudy, but in hindsight, knowing now what "clear" actually means, it also wasn't really clear.
At some point I came up with "mg's best guess", which was "Keep the colour on the test strip in the dark purple shades, probably above 5ppm!", and I wouldn't get algae anymore. Sometimes, my FC would creep up above 10ppm (pool shop testing...). Even though the pool shop told me to dial the SWG down, I noticed three things:
1) No one in the family or friends had noticed that FC was higher than "normal". No chlorine smell, no stinging eyes, no skin getting "burnt off"
2) No algae
3) The water looked noticeably clearer
I started wondering, what was going on. At some point I understood that CYA protects chlorine from UV-decay by actually forming a bond with chlorine. And I started thinking "If UV actually forms a bond with chlorine that is strong enough to protect it from UV, is this chlorine actually still as efficient as a sanitiser? But why does it still show up in the FC-test?". So I started to ask Dr. Google. Once I put "FC" and "CYA" together in a Google search, I pretty quickly found TFP, particularly posts by a guy called "Chem Geek". What a revelation. I learnt about "Ben's best guess" and the "TFP FC/CYA chart", together with scientific explanations, citing peer-reviewed papers. It all started to make sense. So, towards the end of last year's swimming season, I started to implement the TFP-method bit by bit.
Then came Covid, and I suddenly spent a lot of time at home. More reading on TFP and the papers cited by Chem Geek. I understood the other pillars of "Trouble Free Pool Care", the relation between TA, CO2-outgassing and pH. I also invested some time in little experiments (I am a physicist after all...), like the above mentioned "Chlorine-Need vs. UV-load" data logging. Now I finally understand what I am doing. In that period, I did a lot of water testing, sometimes a few per day - just because I could (I was at home anyway), and because I was curious what my FC and pH were doing over the course of a day or a week. Or what happens after an afternoon with four or five kids in the pool? What I did, was probably over-the-top. But during the learning-phase, frequent testing is very beneficial, and will allow you to understand and trust your system. Once you are there, you can reduce the testing frequency to your liking and requirements.
But as I started (what turned out to be a little too long...), the key to sanity is to not worry about high FC, only worry about low FC. Implement the required buffer to min-FC to allow a testing frequency that suits your liking. Yes, the higher you keep FC, the more your SWG has to work which will eventually limit its life time. But if that's what's required to keep the required buffer (according to your chlorine needs and testing frequency) to min-FC, then so be it. Each SLAM will cost you a lot of time and bleach.
If kids are complaining about stinging eyes, try to get the whole picture. Was it really just FC that was higher that day? Or was it also a 40°C scorcher and they spent the whole day in the pool? Things like that. Was CC increased after a day of high bather load? You might not even know, because by the time you test, your SWG might already have dealt with the CC. Yes, if they went in during the SLAM with FC adjusted to SLAM for CYA 90, but CYA turned out be much lower once you tested, the water might have been a bit harsher - but still less harsh than at any public indoor pool (where stinging eyes and a very "bleachy" smell even after showering seem to be the norm...). If it turns out that they really react to higher FC, then sticking more rigid to the SWG target-FC would make sense, but that will require more frequent testing to keep FC above minimum and below whatever you declare your personal maximum.
At the beginning of this season I also did some tracking of my chlorine and correlated the chlorine losses to the weather conditions (sunny, partly cloudy or deep grey - I actually calculated the total UV-load from an Internet UV-tracker, but that's the Geek in me). If I know how much my FC changed in a day and how much the SWG created, I can calculate how much chlorine I lost over the day. I tracked that as a percentage of the current FC.
When plotting this percentage over the "sunnyness", I got a "slanted cloud", which gave me an average FC loss depending on weather. There is of course a variation depending on bather load that is reflected in the cloud. Or just the test-resolution of 0.5ppm per drop. Now I know that on a sunny day I will loose on average about 20% of my chlorine in a day, on a partly cloudy day maybe 15%, and on a fully cloudy day maybe 10% (all of that with CYA around 80ppm). So, with FC in the order of 10ppm and my chlorinator "bars" going in 0.5ppm steps, the settings of interest will be daily chlorine productions of 1ppm, 1.5ppm and 2ppm.
Let's say I set my SWG on 1.5ppm daily production and my CYA is 80ppm. Having some average cloudiness will give me a UV-chlorine need of about 15% per day - that means I will reach equilibrium at FC=10ppm where the chlorine need matches the chlorine produced by the SWG (both 1.5ppm). Should it stay sunny with a chlorine need more like 20%, equilibrium will be reached around 7.5ppm (just above the SWG target-FC). Should the sun not show up at all for days, with a chlorine need more towards 10%, equilibrium will be at 15ppm (still well below SLAM-FC of 31ppm). Great - I found SWG settings that will keep FC in an acceptable range. If it stays sunny, I will stay above 7.5ppm, but I won't go above 15ppm. In that whole range I never got any complaints, no stinging eyes, no chlorine smell. Yes, if my son stays with friends in the pool for the whole day, his eyes will show some reaction - but that is completely independent from the actual FC, same thing happened in pre-TFP times when aiming for an FC below 3ppm.
If it stays really sunny for longer periods, I up my SWG to 2ppm chlorine production per day. Water will get warmer, kids hang out in the pool more often and for longer, much higher bather load. Should the sun be hidden behind dark clouds for days, I might go down to 1ppm per day for a while. Generally, I am trying to keep FC around 8-9ppm, by occasionally going up or down one SWG "bar" (in my SWG I only program the run times, the chlorine production is a manual setting that I can easily change without going through the menu).
At some point, chlorine need might be higher than expected, and a CYA test will reveal that it's time for a CYA-top-up. That's another reason for a healthy buffer towards min-FC.
Now the days are getting shorter, sun-angle noticeably lower, and chlorine-need starts to get lower. Time to reduce the pump run-times a bit to make my default 1.5ppm per day maybe 1.4 or 1.3ppm.
For the first 3 years of pool ownership, I just did trial-and-error. I also tried to stay within the industry recommended range of 1ppm to 3ppm, based on strip testing and a monthly or fortnightly test at the pool shop. I pretty quickly realised that 1ppm is a really bad idea, I constantly had to brush algae off the side walls. Water never turned really cloudy, but in hindsight, knowing now what "clear" actually means, it also wasn't really clear.
At some point I came up with "mg's best guess", which was "Keep the colour on the test strip in the dark purple shades, probably above 5ppm!", and I wouldn't get algae anymore. Sometimes, my FC would creep up above 10ppm (pool shop testing...). Even though the pool shop told me to dial the SWG down, I noticed three things:
1) No one in the family or friends had noticed that FC was higher than "normal". No chlorine smell, no stinging eyes, no skin getting "burnt off"
2) No algae
3) The water looked noticeably clearer
I started wondering, what was going on. At some point I understood that CYA protects chlorine from UV-decay by actually forming a bond with chlorine. And I started thinking "If UV actually forms a bond with chlorine that is strong enough to protect it from UV, is this chlorine actually still as efficient as a sanitiser? But why does it still show up in the FC-test?". So I started to ask Dr. Google. Once I put "FC" and "CYA" together in a Google search, I pretty quickly found TFP, particularly posts by a guy called "Chem Geek". What a revelation. I learnt about "Ben's best guess" and the "TFP FC/CYA chart", together with scientific explanations, citing peer-reviewed papers. It all started to make sense. So, towards the end of last year's swimming season, I started to implement the TFP-method bit by bit.
Then came Covid, and I suddenly spent a lot of time at home. More reading on TFP and the papers cited by Chem Geek. I understood the other pillars of "Trouble Free Pool Care", the relation between TA, CO2-outgassing and pH. I also invested some time in little experiments (I am a physicist after all...), like the above mentioned "Chlorine-Need vs. UV-load" data logging. Now I finally understand what I am doing. In that period, I did a lot of water testing, sometimes a few per day - just because I could (I was at home anyway), and because I was curious what my FC and pH were doing over the course of a day or a week. Or what happens after an afternoon with four or five kids in the pool? What I did, was probably over-the-top. But during the learning-phase, frequent testing is very beneficial, and will allow you to understand and trust your system. Once you are there, you can reduce the testing frequency to your liking and requirements.
But as I started (what turned out to be a little too long...), the key to sanity is to not worry about high FC, only worry about low FC. Implement the required buffer to min-FC to allow a testing frequency that suits your liking. Yes, the higher you keep FC, the more your SWG has to work which will eventually limit its life time. But if that's what's required to keep the required buffer (according to your chlorine needs and testing frequency) to min-FC, then so be it. Each SLAM will cost you a lot of time and bleach.
If kids are complaining about stinging eyes, try to get the whole picture. Was it really just FC that was higher that day? Or was it also a 40°C scorcher and they spent the whole day in the pool? Things like that. Was CC increased after a day of high bather load? You might not even know, because by the time you test, your SWG might already have dealt with the CC. Yes, if they went in during the SLAM with FC adjusted to SLAM for CYA 90, but CYA turned out be much lower once you tested, the water might have been a bit harsher - but still less harsh than at any public indoor pool (where stinging eyes and a very "bleachy" smell even after showering seem to be the norm...). If it turns out that they really react to higher FC, then sticking more rigid to the SWG target-FC would make sense, but that will require more frequent testing to keep FC above minimum and below whatever you declare your personal maximum.
The stinging of the eyes I have found is when the PH is around 8. Keeping it 7.5-7.6 was always the perfect non stinging level.
if your ta is climbing this could be false testing from static electricity on the reagent bottle tip
try wiping tip between drops
try wiping tip between drops
wow i read it all, thanks that's a lot of in depth info, i did glaze over a bit about half way but i stuck with you and read it all, it is above my grade but i get what your saying, i am hoping i can get it to more where i can just test say once a week or maybe once every 2 weeks, i am really tired of the time i am putting in its a daily something always to do
i am going to try the 100% at 4 hours, as if i left it at 5 hours it seems like it was just going to keep creeping up, it did go from 7.5 to 9 in 2 days, but i hear you depending on weather it seems to me very hard to really get it to set and forget, but i will do my best to get it as stable as possible,
if 4 hours don't work i will try 75% for 6 hours.....then Dirks idea of alternate days at different hours, i will find something that works
should i worry about TA being at 120 ? PH has been stable so far so no issues there yet....
i will give TA another test tomorrow as well as CYA so i can find my target FC, so wipe the tip, i thought that would cause more static , but ok if that's what u recommend ok , i have not been testing TA as much as other tests like PH and FC, but usually when i tested it was always 80 ish, but last test i got 120, i will check again .....
- Nov 12, 2017
- 11,842
- Pool Size
- 12300
- Surface
- Plaster
- Chlorine
- Salt Water Generator
- SWG Type
- Pentair Intellichlor IC-40
Testing FC, CC and pH once a week will be doable, once you figure out the SWG. I couldn't go a week for pH if it wasn't for my IntelipH, but you say your pH is stable so you could be good there. I wouldn't stretch it to two weeks, that's asking for trouble. I can test FC, CC and pH and empty the baskets in about 10 minutes. In the fall I empty the baskets more often. And in swim season I try to walk by the pool pad and pool once a day. So total time is about 20 minutes a week, maybe less.
Once you learn your pool, the other tests can be done less often. I test CH and TA about once a month. Salt and CYA a few times a year. I clean my filter once a year.
That's a pretty easy schedule for owning a pool.
Once you learn your pool, the other tests can be done less often. I test CH and TA about once a month. Salt and CYA a few times a year. I clean my filter once a year.
That's a pretty easy schedule for owning a pool.
- Nov 12, 2017
- 11,842
- Pool Size
- 12300
- Surface
- Plaster
- Chlorine
- Salt Water Generator
- SWG Type
- Pentair Intellichlor IC-40
I think you're struggling with the SWG because of your lack of control of it. The 25% increments I get. That's the limit of the SWG. Without an automation controller, mine can only do 20% increments, but with its companion automation, I can do 1% increments and that makes dialing in the SWG a breeze. I can't fool with runtime, because that has to remain constant because of my solar heater.
I don't think you have that limitation, so I think what you're going to have to do is standardize on 100% or 75% SWG and find a better way to schedule your pump (or your SWG runtime). Go to that external timer you mentioned, hopefully a digital one, so that you can dial in minutes. You might figure out the 4-hour/6-hour thing you mentioned, but come fall and spring and middle of summer and your fringe months (late fall and early spring) you're going to be having this same trouble all over again, each time. You might need to adjust your SWG 10 times a year, maybe less and maybe more. You need more granular control to do that.
Once you get a minute-by-minute timer going, I think you'll find this all to be much easier. There's another advantage to an external timer:
What are you using to control power to the SWG? Just its flow switch? Or do you have some way to control its power relative to when the pump is on and off? Because if you're only relying on the flow switch, we recommend against that. Your SWG should power down when the pump does, so that if you have a flow switch malfunction (which is not that uncommon), your SWG still can't run when the pump is off. Otherwise you are risking a possible dangerous situation where the SWG is producing chlorine gas with no water flow to carry it off. That can actually cause an explosion.
So with an external timer, made for a pool, you can wire the SWG to it, so that the SWG only receives power during the pump on schedule. That then provides two levels of protection, the timer and the flow switch. Highly recommend that setup if you don't have that already.
There are also dual timers, so that you could control the pump and SWG separately. Say a 6 hour pump runtime, and a separate length of time for the SWG, running within the pump scheduled hours: 4 hours or 4 hours 15 minutes or four hours 35 minutes, whatever, as your FC demand rises and falls throughout the seasons.
The point is... I think you're going to continue to make yourself crazy until you figure out a better way to schedule your SWG runtime...
I don't think you have that limitation, so I think what you're going to have to do is standardize on 100% or 75% SWG and find a better way to schedule your pump (or your SWG runtime). Go to that external timer you mentioned, hopefully a digital one, so that you can dial in minutes. You might figure out the 4-hour/6-hour thing you mentioned, but come fall and spring and middle of summer and your fringe months (late fall and early spring) you're going to be having this same trouble all over again, each time. You might need to adjust your SWG 10 times a year, maybe less and maybe more. You need more granular control to do that.
Once you get a minute-by-minute timer going, I think you'll find this all to be much easier. There's another advantage to an external timer:
What are you using to control power to the SWG? Just its flow switch? Or do you have some way to control its power relative to when the pump is on and off? Because if you're only relying on the flow switch, we recommend against that. Your SWG should power down when the pump does, so that if you have a flow switch malfunction (which is not that uncommon), your SWG still can't run when the pump is off. Otherwise you are risking a possible dangerous situation where the SWG is producing chlorine gas with no water flow to carry it off. That can actually cause an explosion.
So with an external timer, made for a pool, you can wire the SWG to it, so that the SWG only receives power during the pump on schedule. That then provides two levels of protection, the timer and the flow switch. Highly recommend that setup if you don't have that already.
There are also dual timers, so that you could control the pump and SWG separately. Say a 6 hour pump runtime, and a separate length of time for the SWG, running within the pump scheduled hours: 4 hours or 4 hours 15 minutes or four hours 35 minutes, whatever, as your FC demand rises and falls throughout the seasons.
The point is... I think you're going to continue to make yourself crazy until you figure out a better way to schedule your SWG runtime...
hi, my pump plugs into the SWG, I set start time on SWG and when it starts up it then starts the pump, so pump and SWG run the same time , i have not seen a need to run separate times...PUMP and SWG....yet
i left swg off yesterday it was FC9 at 8am , tested this morning 8am and its FC 7.5, was a hot day yesterday so it lost 1.5, so now is 7.5 and cloudy day i am leaving SWG off again , thinking tomorrow morning it might be around 6.5, i will then start up SWG and do the next test , 4 hours at 100%, starting from base at i guess 6.5
so for run times i could put on a digital timer, manual says i can disable the SWG inbuilt timer and use external, then i could say run for 4.5 hours at 100% , but running 5 hours it crept up i wonder will knocking off 30 minutes be the answer, i guess thats all i can do, or try different times at the 75% output
actually as i am starting it up tomorrow i will try it, i will get a timer and try 4.5 hours at 100% from the base point which i am thinking will be around FC 6.5 ......will see how that goes
- Mar 5, 2020
- 3,007
- Pool Size
- 66000
- Surface
- Plaster
- Chlorine
- Salt Water Generator
- SWG Type
- Astral Viron V35
I think most Aussie SWGs go the other way round (at least my one does, and I think the Watermaid does, too): You plug the pump into the SWG controller, and the SWG-timer controls both.
In my case, the SWG starts the pump and after 5 minutes the SWG starts creating chlorine. At the end of the scheduled run-time, chlorine production stops, but the pump keeps running for another 2 minutes before it is shut off.
- Mar 5, 2020
- 3,007
- Pool Size
- 66000
- Surface
- Plaster
- Chlorine
- Salt Water Generator
- SWG Type
- Astral Viron V35
I wouldn't try to over-control, it is a slowish reacting system. Switching between 0 and full throttle doesn't make it easier to work out where it will settle. If you went down by 1.5ppm in a day with the SWG off, then try to adjust the settings (with the help of PoolMath) to create 1.5ppm in a day. Can you define more than one timer period per day? Then you could define two periods with two different outputs, that should allow you to get close enough to that.
I wouldn't leave the SWG off for whole days once you are below the non-SWG target range. The lower FC with SWGs only works because of the constant chlorine production and the local super chlorination within the cell. You are inviting the algae to return.
Assuming your CYA is now at 70, FC 10 would still be target range for non-SWG pools, I don't think you need to be worried about FC 9. Much easier to adjust your SWG on a higher level. Once you got it, you can dial it slowly down until FC settles where you want it.
You cell creates 30g per hour (or 1.58 pounds per 24h), right? And your pool volume is 36000 L (9500 Gal). That means 5h@100% creates 4.1ppm, that is too much. Try 50% and either 4h (1.7ppm) or 5h (2.1ppm), that should be close. Or 7h@25% (1.5ppm). See where these will take you, and fine tune from there. If you can define two timer periods with different outputs, you can find a combination that will give the required chlorine production and the required pump run time to keep the pool clean (not sure how many leaves and debris you get, but my pool needs more than 4 or 5 hours in summer, which isn't a huge problem with a VSP).