SWG the best answer?

[cowboycasey]

I guess I'm the only one that doesn't have a positive impression of saltwater pools. From my perspective, the salt eats things up, and you've still got chlorine in the pool, and you may well end up needing to maintain a stenner pump to auto feed acid. I'd rather cut out the middle man and just add chlorine directly, but I'm still somewhat new to this, and I don't travel a lot so I won't be away a lot.

You are not alone in that thinking, what most do not understand is all pools are saltwater pools, almost every manual method of chlorinating is adding salt to your pool, that is one of the reasons we tell everyone to test there water before adding salt as most pools will already have a salt content between 1000 to 2000 ppm

 

[RobbieH]

1. No issues with anything getting "eaten up" here at my house, even after 4 years of having a salt pool. Not even any damage to plants.
2. Yes, it is a chlorine pool, but FC levels are lower. With a CYA of 70, my FC is 4-5, depending on when you test. 5 or so in the morning, 4 or thereabouts at sunset.
3. Maybe you need a Stenner, maybe not. In 4 years I have not needed one, but it might be a nice addition to make it even more trouble-free someday.

I don't know who this middle-man is you are talking about, the SWG completely eliminates the need to buy any chlorine for normal maintenance. So not only is there no middle-man, but there's no man at all. And, I can go a week without even thinking about my pool if I wish.

And yes, I travel for work. I got tired of depending on someone to add bleach, because it never happened. Coming home to a green pool is not fun.

 

[JoeRJGR]

Just wanted to add some information from a conversetaion I just had with Hayward. As Swamp lady stated, the AQR current limiter issues was resolved in any control box with a serial number of 3A15 or greater. The upgrade took place in early 2015, thus the 15....just another reason not to buy a used one on Craigs list...

 

[ping]

The Hayward is small for your pool size and you will have to run it for longer periods of time during the peak of summer.

Do you know how much FC in ppm each day during the summer? This will give you a good idea how long you will need to run the SWG.

Not all pools that have SWG's need to add acid to control the pH, but most do. If you have low TA fill water and you can keep it low around 60, then you will most likely not have to add too much acid.

Thanks for the serial # fix.

 

[JoeRJGR]

I dont know how much FC I use in a day, but I dont think hayward even makes a SWG for more then 40,000...do they?

 

[ping]

No they don't for the most part. They do have large systems that produce 6lbs of chlorine gas in a day, but that is not the best option for you. There are a few others that do, CircuPool, Pentair, and AutoPilot. The CircuPool RJ 60 or RJ 60+ will produce the most chlorine at 3lbs a day and the others produce 2lbs. a day. The Hayward only produces 1.4lbs a day.

The Hayward will only produce 4.5ppm of chlorine in a day for your pool size. That amount of FC usage falls at the higher end of the normal range for pools.

 

[camueller]

You are not alone in that thinking, what most do not understand is all pools are saltwater pools, almost every manual method of chlorinating is adding salt to your pool, that is one of the reasons we tell everyone to test there water before adding salt as most pools will already have a salt content between 1000 to 2000 ppm

Good point. Honestly, when i read that liquid chlorine was adding salt to my water I almost ran from this site...but I kept reading and realized no matter what we do, we are adding something to the water, and salt seems to be the least problem (compared to CYA anyway).



As far as my comment regarding "eaten up", my experience is mostly in relation to relatively soft limestone coping on my parent's pool. The salt was clearly eating that faster than normal weathering. And I have to believe it sucks moisture even out of concrete. But having lived near the beach long enough, maybe I'm just afraid of salt having seen what it does to EVERYTHING outdoors on the coast. *note my parent's pool was not at the beach

Perhaps middleman was a bad choice of words. All I really meant is that both are a means to the same end. From what I've read, the costs are negligible, and since my experience has taught me that salt is tough on everything, I'm just not interested. I'm certainly not trying to convince anyone. I mostly just wanted to make sure I wasn't the only one that didn't think SWG was for them.

 

[RobbieH]

Why would salt suck anything out of concrete? It won't hurt concrete by the way.

There could have been other issues with your parents' pool. It's hard to say. High or low pH would cause issues, too. There have been lots of reports of salt pools causing corrosion on stone coping, but not one single person has yet posted a picture of the issue.

Salt that is used on roads is a very high concentration. And ocean water is 10x the concentration we use in our pools (35,000 ppm vs 3500 ppm). It's just not the same.

It is commonly believed that salt pools are the same as the ocean, but like I said, it's not the same.

 

[JayG]

Obviously, the SWG solution works great for the vast majority of folks. We recently faced the decision to go SWG vs LC and we opted for metered LC injection going the Stenner route. We reasoned that our pool at 35,000 gal was on the cusp of what could be reliably handled by a SWG. The recommendation to double the rated capacity left us only with the only the Circupool RJ60 that was close, but felt that the many reports of cracked housings made it less than bulletproof (no offense to Circupool owners). The other factor that concerned us was the issue of rising pH seen with many SWG installations. It seems that problem has been partially mitigated by proper management of TA, but we didn't want to trade pouring bleach for pouring MA. To us, the beauty of the Stenner is its simplicity, the easy ability to calculate dosage, the ease with which to see that it is actually working, its indifference to flow rates, its relative independence of dosing from the pump run time, and freedom (mostly) from hauling bleach. The trick we are using to limit our hauling of bleach to once every ~3 months uses the inherent chill of the earth to keep lots of bleach stable over 3 months: we buried a 55 gal drum--a "wine cellar" for bleach. We filled it with 50 gal of 12.5% LC ($2.99/gal @ OSJL) and the temperature of the contents remain at 52-53°F which should mean negligible degradation during its anticipated time of use. So far, we couldn't be happier: FC, pH, TA all have been rock solid. We now even have the Stenner controlled by a WiFi enabled timer so that we can change dosing using our phones. Kinda cool.

So far, the water looks better than it did when we first bought the house and it was being "professionally" managed. We'll see how it goes.

To be fair, we don't know about the road not taken. We may have been too swayed by the problems we read with SWG and not fully take into account the vast number of happy SWG users who only have beautiful, sparkling pools, and no hiccups. If we had gone the SWG route, we'd likely be singing its praises as well.

Just wanted to provide a different perspective...not rain on anyone's parade. Whatever makes our pools more trouble free can only be a good thing.

 

[dlaslo]

I've been going back and forth with salt. I used to have a cheap-o WalMart pool with salt so I'm familiar with the technology. But now we have a bigger pool with a 30 year warranty that says "No Salt!!! " So I'd have to swallow that warranty. The other factor is we have an RV and we can leave the pool unattended for a week or two. So I'm looking for either a LC or salt system in any case.

From what I've gathered here, a Hayward might be OK? Right now, I lose 2-3 ppm each day with 50CYA.

 

[RobbieH]

Obviously, the SWG solution works great for the vast majority of folks. We recently faced the decision to go SWG vs LC and we opted for metered LC injection going the Stenner route. We reasoned that our pool at 35,000 gal was on the cusp of what could be reliably handled by a SWG. The recommendation to double the rated capacity left us only with the only the Circupool RJ60 that was close, but felt that the many reports of cracked housings made it less than bulletproof (no offense to Circupool owners). The other factor that concerned us was the issue of rising pH seen with many SWG installations. It seems that problem has been partially mitigated by proper management of TA, but we didn't want to trade pouring bleach for pouring MA.

My understanding is that the older Circupool units were originally built by Compupool. That said, my much less capable Compupool CPSC-48 kept my pool properly chlorinated for 4 years, before the board went up in flames. Now I have the Circupool 60, and it's keeping my pool chlorinated with it set at 30%. If it works on my 44,000 gallon pool in Texas, I'm pretty sure it will work on your 35,000 gallon pool in New York.

Originally, I avoided going SWG. I installed a Liquidator and tried maintaining the pool through that. It was still way too much of a hassle buying all that chlorine and filling that container. It gave me the opportunity to take trips without having to depend on someone else to make daily doses of chlorine, but it was still a nightmare to buy all those jugs and deal with them. The wife finally started refusing to pick up chlorine, and it was all left to me.

And again, I buy and use WAY less muriatic acid than I did bleach. It's currently about a 7:1 ratio (I was using 7 times more bleach than I use MA), and I expect that ratio to get even better as I get TA in range.

- - - Updated - - -

I've been going back and forth with salt. I used to have a cheap-o WalMart pool with salt so I'm familiar with the technology. But now we have a bigger pool with a 30 year warranty that says "No Salt!!! " So I'd have to swallow that warranty. The other factor is we have an RV and we can leave the pool unattended for a week or two. So I'm looking for either a LC or salt system in any case.

From what I've gathered here, a Hayward might be OK? Right now, I lose 2-3 ppm each day with 50CYA.

For a small pool, consider a Liquidator. I gave mine to a friend with a 12,000 gallon pool and he has been very happy with it for 3 years.

 

[WASP]

If you have a problem with your pool later on, remove the cell and don't tell them you used one. The salt level is so low, I don't know how it would hurt anything. Many people on this forum have stated that they have not suffered any ill effects from using a SWG. Using bleach or other chlorine containing products will raise the salt level in your pool over a period of time.

 

[JayG]

My understanding is that the older Circupool units were originally built by Compupool. That said, my much less capable Compupool CPSC-48 kept my pool properly chlorinated for 4 years, before the board went up in flames. Now I have the Circupool 60, and it's keeping my pool chlorinated with it set at 30%. If it works on my 44,000 gallon pool in Texas, I'm pretty sure it will work on your 35,000 gallon pool in New York.

Originally, I avoided going SWG. I installed a Liquidator and tried maintaining the pool through that. It was still way too much of a hassle buying all that chlorine and filling that container. It gave me the opportunity to take trips without having to depend on someone else to make daily doses of chlorine, but it was still a nightmare to buy all those jugs and deal with them. The wife finally started refusing to pick up chlorine, and it was all left to me.

And again, I buy and use WAY less muriatic acid than I did bleach. It's currently about a 7:1 ratio (I was using 7 times more bleach than I use MA), and I expect that ratio to get even better as I get TA in range.

Robbie, I probably would have been fine with a SWG set up like you have. Like many decisions, it was hard to assign probabilities to various choices, so I went with what felt the most comfortable. I really couldn't figure out how our Stenner system was going to let us down, but I could think of a few ways SWG might have. So one pays ones money and makes ones choices. I'm happy with our system as it appears to be performing as we planned. My bleach schlepping so far has amounted to 2 trips (could have been one trip but I first bought only enough bleach to test out the system before completely filling) to OSJL and about 20 minutes with a transfer pump pumping the bleach from car side into the tank. Based on our current FC burn rate, we should be set for 3 months. I can live with that.

I completely understand why the Liquidator would be frustrating on a pool your size. Too much incremental bleach buying and schlepping. Finding a storage solution for large quantities of LC and the Stenner obviates that problem in my mind. Plus, now I can check from a distance whether the timer is powered and activating the pump. Maintenance amounts to a yearly change of the Stenner tubing. No SWG cell cleaning. No integrated circuit boards to worry about. Very simple. The way I like it.

 

[RobbieH]

Totally understandable. And yes the LQ was very frustrating for my pool, but it works great on my friend's 12,000 gallon pool, and bonus for him he got it for free.

 

[JoeRJGR]

Really interesting posts guys...I have a 38,000 gallon pool and I have only recently sarted tracking the amount of chorine (bleach) I use on a given day. I only really would consider a Haywrad 40K unit but everyone says its too small. Today in jersey it was 90 with bright sunshine, but the water is still in the middle 60's. The pool used .5 ppm of bleach at 60 CYA...same yesterday I have read that the Hayward 40K system produces up to 4 PPM a day...not sure if that is running all day or not...

 

[needsajet]

I love my SWG and wouldn't do without it. Fair enough, I hear ya, only Hayward.

With 12 hours of run time, the T15 at 100% will provide ~2.2 ppm in 38,000 gallons. To produce 4 PPM, run it for 22 hours, or for 24 hours at 90%. The reason people consider that small, is because they would like the option of running their pump for fewer hours. You could have 2 Haywards in series if you wanted to run your pump for only 12 hours, but I'm guessing a 2-speed or variable speed pump would achieve better economics and flexibility. The SWG is not well-suited to bringing FC levels up, so you could bring your level up with chlorinating liquid and maintain it with SWG, with that size cell. If you have a day when you know you'll need 5 or 6 PPM, you would need to pour in liquid chlorine as a top-up. Hope that makes sense.

Edited and barely makes sense!

 

[JoeRJGR]

Lot of sense...Thanks for the reply....can you run one two cells off one controller? If not I think you are spot on with the variable speed motor...that would have to be a less expensice way to go. Im going to keep monitoring my usage carefully....

 

[pooldv]

I run my VS pump at 1100 rpm for skimming and making chlorine with the SWG. It uses 150 watts of electricity at 1100 rpm. So, at 10.25c/kWh I can run my pump 24x7 for 12 bucks a month.

 

[needsajet]

I don't know re: controllers. My SWG has a dedicated power supply/controller/timer, and it's not able to run two cells. I was hoping pooldv would mention his 24/7 pumping cost.

The VS pump is a good way to go - high-efficiency motor, fun to tinker with, and cheap as chips to run. I've also read here that swapping out the motor on an existing pump with a 2-speed motor is a lower outlay option for cutting the hourly pumping cost.

 

[pooldv]

I love my VS pump! It is ridiculously efficient. Happy to share!

Yes, a 2 speed pump is also good. On low speed it will move half the water and use a quarter of the electricity as it does on high.