SWG stopped working

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run53

LifeTime Supporter
May 4, 2010
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Everything was great this year until today around 6:00pm when I took an FC reading and it was 1.0 :eek:

yesterday I took the reading at noon time and it was 6.0. I keep it around 6.0 and it's stayed there pretty much since I opened it. The different thing I did yesterday was to turn it off for a couple hours after I added Calcium to the pool. I usually dissolve the calcium in a bucket of water before I put it in the pool, then after a couple hours I turned the SWG back on.

I was surprised to see my FC go down to 1.0 today. The only thing I can think of is something happened to the SWG when I switched it off. It's clearly not working even though all the lights say it is. So I added some bleach and toggled it a couple times to see if that helps and will take another reading tomorrow.

Will adding calcium affect the SWG, or is it possibly dead? It's only 2 years old and the last one lasted 7 years.
 
pooldv said:
No, calcium will not affect it and generally if all the lights are green then it is working fine. My bet is there is algae growing in the pool consuming the chlorine as fast as the SWG is making it. Turn off the SWG and do an Overnight Chlorine Loss Test to see if there is algae.
Click to expand...

Nope, no algae......OCLT results last night:

9:00pm FC=10.5 (added 3 gallons bleach at 6:00pm after FC was 1.0)
7:00am FC = 10.0

This is very strange. The cell was replaced in June 2014 and all lights are working as expected. Salt was measured with Taylor salt kit at 3000 ppm.

I think it's more than a coincidence that I turned off the SWG to put the calcium in and that's exactly when the problem started. I'll monitor it again today. Since I'm starting the day at FC=10.0, if the SWG is working the FC should only go down by a couple ppm at most. If it's near 1.0, I'm afraid I have something wrong.

Is it possible the electronics (not the cell) is bad? How would I tell?
 
run53 said:
Nope, no algae......OCLT results last night:

9:00pm FC=10.5 (added 3 gallons bleach at 6:00pm after FC was 1.0)
7:00am FC = 10.0

This is very strange. The cell was replaced in June 2014 and all lights are working as expected. Salt was measured with Taylor salt kit at 3000 ppm.

I think it's more than a coincidence that I turned off the SWG to put the calcium in and that's exactly when the problem started. I'll monitor it again today. Since I'm starting the day at FC=10.0, if the SWG is working the FC should only go down by a couple ppm at most. If it's near 1.0, I'm afraid I have something wrong.

Is it possible the electronics (not the cell) is bad? How would I tell?
Click to expand...

If your FC goes from 10ppm to 1ppm you have more issues than a non working cell. A clean pool should only use 2-4ppm of FC a day.

What is your CYA level?
 
domct203 said:
If your FC goes from 10ppm to 1ppm you have more issues than a non working cell. A clean pool should only use 2-4ppm of FC a day.

What is your CYA level?
Click to expand...

I think you misread my posts. It did not go from 10ppm to 1ppm. it went from 6ppm to 1ppm from noon on Friday (when I put the calcium in) to 5:00pm Saturday. I lose about 3ppm per day, so those numbers are in the ballpark. After I noticed it was 1.ppm, I added 3 gallons of bleach to bring it to 10.5ppm.

Today I will see where it goes from there (with the SWG turned on).

My CYA is 70

Also...the water is sparkling clear and it passed OCLT last night.
 
run53 said:
I think you misread my posts. It did not go from 10ppm to 1ppm. it went from 6ppm to 1ppm from noon on Friday (when I put the calcium in) to 5:00pm Saturday. I loose about 3ppm per day, so those numbers are in the ballpark. After I noticed it was 1.ppm, I added 3 gallons of bleach to bring it to 10.5ppm.

Today I will see where it goes from there (with the SWG turned on).

My CYA is 70

Also...the water is sparkling clear and it passed OCLT last night.
Click to expand...

I think I read it exactly as posted.......

run53 said:
Since I'm starting the day at FC=10.0, if the SWG is working the FC should only go down by a couple ppm at most. If it's near 1.0, I'm afraid I have something wrong.
Click to expand...

Good to see your CYA at 70ppm, & if you passed the OCLT with the SWG off then we can rule out organics.

Good luck, keep us posted.
 
domct203 said:
I think I read it exactly as posted.......



Good to see your CYA at 70ppm, & if you passed the OCLT with the SWG off then we can rule out organics.

Good luck, keep us posted.
Click to expand...

Yeah...I can see where that statement can be taken a different way. What I meant to say was that this morning I am starting at 10.0 and IF by the end of the day I am down near 1.0 again (or even a loss of more than a few ppm), there is something wrong.
yes.....SWG was off for OCLT.

Anyways, I won't know anything more till the end of the day. I hope it was just a glitch in the electronics (keeping fingers crossed).
[/B]
 
I suppose it is possible, but I don't recall seeing it. Some pool stores can test SWG cells. Maybe a bird or something peed in the pool and used up all the chlorine. I've had mysterious chlorine drops quite a few times over the years. But, we live in the woods and lots of stuff hangs out around the pool. Run the SWG all night and see if FC goes up. Maybe power off and restart the SWG that seems to fix weird electrical problems sometimes.
 
Just took the nightly reading and with the SWG on at 65% during the day from 7:30am till 5:00pm, the FC dropped from 10ppm this morning to 7ppm at 9:00pm. I expected some drop but not sure I expected 3ppm drop.

I like your idea pooldv.....I will run the SWG all night and see what I get in the morning.
 

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Check volts and amps for power going into power box or coming out. Either way will show how much power is being used. Most SWGs will use about 150 watts when generating.
 
Well, the results of leaving the SWG on overnight at 65% were not good.
6/4/2017 9:00pm FC=7ppm
6/5/2017 6:30am FC= 7.5ppm

OCLT the night before was good...
6/3/2017 9:00pm FC=10.5
6/4/2017 7:00am FC = 10.0

Seems to me something with the SWG is not working. I will do another OCLT tonight just to make sure I get consistent OCLT results.

- - - Updated - - -

JamesW said:
Check volts and amps for power going into power box or coming out. Either way will show how much power is being used. Most SWGs will use about 150 watts when generating.
Click to expand...

Seems like a good idea, but not sure how to do that. I have a Fluke but not sure where to take the measurements.
 
I am in no way an expert like the fine folks who are already replying to your thread, but I am a newbie, and I have a "dumb newbie" perspective that might help.

I think you are really worried because you took a reading and saw 1.0ppm. Obviously this is not good, BUT.....

If you ran your SWG overnight, and your FC in your pool went up from 7.0 to 7.5, doesn't that mean the SWG is generating Chlorine?

In looking at your data, it appears you reasonably expect to lose 0.5 FC overnight. So, you SWG compensated for this, and increased your FC level by 0.5, so it had a net effect of +1.0FC in your pool.

There could also be testing variables like precision, where the water was taken from in the pool and had that water been filtered or stagnant, etc... and you do have a large pool.

All I am saying here is maybe you are OK....
 
ramsfan said:
I am in no way an expert like the fine folks who are already replying to your thread, but I am a newbie, and I have a "dumb newbie" perspective that might help.

I think you are really worried because you took a reading and saw 1.0ppm. Obviously this is not good, BUT.....

If you ran your SWG overnight, and your FC in your pool went up from 7.0 to 7.5, doesn't that mean the SWG is generating Chlorine?

In looking at your data, it appears you reasonably expect to lose 0.5 FC overnight. So, you SWG compensated for this, and increased your FC level by 0.5, so it had a net effect of +1.0FC in your pool.

There could also be testing variables like precision, where the water was taken from in the pool and had that water been filtered or stagnant, etc... and you do have a large pool.

All I am saying here is maybe you are OK....
Click to expand...

All opinions are appreciated :)

Yes, I agree the SWG is producing Chlorine. However, from 9:00pm to 6:00am overnight, it only produced 1.0ppm at 65% (assuming a 0.5ppm overnight loss). During the day, my SWG typically produces enough Chlorine to keep my pool at 6.0ppm when I run it for 9-10 hours at 65% during this cool rainy weather we've been having. My pool normally eats about 3-4ppm during each day, so clearly 1.0ppm generation is not going to cut it.

So, while it is still producing some Chlorine, I suspect something is wrong. Either something is growing in the water (but OCLT passes) or the SWG controller or cell is bad (cell was replaced in 2014 and previous one lasted 7 years).

One more thing I will try tonight is pull the cell off to clean it and check for calcium deposits.
 
So I took off the cell to check it for calcium deposits but nothing really there. I cleaned it anyways with 10:1 water:muriatic acid bath. Probably not the issue.

Will do another OCLT tonight just to make sure nothing is growing in the pool. If that passes again, it's either an electrical problem with the controller/wires or it's a bad cell.

It's definitely making some Chlorine but it seems minimal. Assuming OCLT passes again, I have to try to decide if it's the cell or the controller. Not sure how to do that other than purchasing another $400 cell.
 
It's a Mybluepool controller with SCC-25 cell. It's actually made by Resilience. The cell was was replaced with a A5-c2 cell in June 2014. Here are some pics.......

2013-06-20 07.45.04.jpg
2013-06-20 07.47.44.jpg
2013-06-20 07.47.10.jpg
2013-06-20 07.45.57.jpg
 
Try turning the percentage to 100%.

If you turn to 100% and there are no errors indicated, I would think that it's working.

You can check volts and amps going into the power box or coming out.

I don't know how comfortable you are doing that. Do what you can do safely.
 

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