Suggestions for changing to SWG?

[Longtown]

I find myself managing a pool in a resort community that gets used pretty heavily during the summer. We are currently using chlorine tablets but are considering changing to SWG. First off is this a good idea? Will a SWG be able to keep up on days with a high bather load? How often is it necessary to replenish the salt? Suggestions for equipment would be greatly appreciated.

We we are also interested in installing equipment that would help monitor ph levels.

 

[Bama Rambler]

Is the pool you manage the one in your sig?
If so, how well does the puck feeder maintain FC?

An SWCG will manage it as well as the puck feeder does or better. You'll likely have to supplement FC during periods of high bather load, but you most likely have to do that now with the puck feeder.

In a commercial environment, I'd recommend a unit that has at least twice the capacity of the pool or more. That way you have some excess capacity when you need it.

 

[Longtown]

Yes that’s the pool....and we do supplement the puck feeder. Just now really getting a handle on the proper feeder settings and figuring out how best to supplement. I’ve used your recommendations in most of the chemical targets..the water looks great but not much bather load yet. All the equipment is pentair so should I stick with pentair for SWG.

 

[jblizzle]

If you have pentair automation system, then sticking with a pentair SWG would be a good idea as it would integrate in. If you just have pentair pumps and filters, then the brand of SWG does not really matter.

 

[Flying Tivo]

For the days you have a heavy load and summer i might suggest a Stenner pump to supplement Chlorine additions.

Felipe

 

[jblizzle]

Given the potential heavy loads, I would recommend significantly oversizing the swg. Suggest just getting a 40K swg which will allow a much higher chlorine output as needed. Also from your signature it does not appear that you have Pentair Automation and if that is true I would actually steer you away from the Pentair SWG as you will not get as fine of control of the output. Consider the Hayward T15.

 

[Longtown]

I am very interested in automating the pool and would appreciate any suggestions as the the most dependable and durable equipment to use. One thing that I didn’t mention in the sig was the pool has four fountains spraying into the pool which seems to necessitate adding acid regularly. I would really like to automate the sanitation as well as the PH but was warned that the automatic systems can fail open and dump a tank of chlorine or acid into the pool. I’m not sure I believe that but it would be good enough reason not to automate if that was a possibility.

 

[jblizzle]

Are the pool and spa completely independant of each other? Are you only concerned about the pool now?

When I say "automation" I am really just talking about the systems that have timers and can control valves, etc. This is a step below where there are sensors in the water the attempt to read the pH and the ORP (surrogate for FC) and then adjust chemicals as required. We usually do not recommend those types of systems for private pools due to the need to maintenance, calibration, etc.

A SWG allows you to set a % output when the pump is running, but it is fixed and you have to find the right setting by trial and error. There is nothing with it that tries to measure the FC levels and automatically adjust. Similarly, there are systems that can add a predetermined amount of acid into the pool to maintain the pH, but again this is open loop, not closed loop with a sensor.

BTW, all the aeration from the fountains will tend to drive the pH up as you have seen. A SWG can also tend to drive the pH up. So you may have to increase the amount of acid added to balance the pH.

 

[Longtown]

The pool and spa are separate and completely independent of each other. One big reason I’m asking about automation is a requirement that the chems be checked four times per day but only one of those needs to be by a human. Adding chlorine and acid is not that big of a deal especially using the pool math app. So I would be happy with something that could track chlorine and ph on a constant basis and we could manually make adjustments.

 

[jblizzle]

Well there is no reasonably priced sensor to measure chlorine levels accurately.

 

[Longtown]

The proxy for chlorine (ORP) would be acceptable.

 

[jblizzle]

The proxy for chlorine (ORP) would be acceptable.

Not according to the many people on this forum that have tried it. This is mostly true for outdoor swg pools where the high cya interferes with the orp test