SWG vs chlorine vs bromine?

[stephenson]

Hi All,

My neighborhood in northern Florida has an adult pool and a kiddie pool. The adult pool is probably 100,000 gallons and the kiddie pool about 25’ circular. Both in ground, gunite. Both about 13 years old.

Some of the community has SWG pools and believe this is the right solution for our community pool, but offer no engineering solutions - mainly supportive anecdotal private pool comments.

I understand a bit of the chemistry issues, and basics like bromine working better for indoor pools since it burns off in UV ... biggest is issue is size vs cost over time of replacing the generator, vs using chlorine.

Would appreciate thoughts, recommendations, etc - I figure there are some brought experiences that would bring us down on one side or the other?

 

[mknauss]

What is your public pool requirements enforced by your municipality? That will drive some of your decisions. How much interaction is there on maintenance?
For that volume pool (are they one water body?) you would need a commercial SWCG set up.

 

[stephenson]

mk - sorry for delay.

Our pool is "private" but we abide by the public pool requirements - just hired a new pool service that quote book and verse - one of the things we liked about their proposal.

I've had a couple of pools, but never with a SWG - have spoken with some folks who like theirs, and others who tired of the replacement cycle and went back to chlorine tabs.

The question I was circling about is whether SWGs are a suitable approach, given the size of the pool and high usage factor - and versus cost and maintenance of other solutions.

Thanks!

 

[mknauss]

The SWCG will just keep adding chlorine, more than what we use in a residential pool as we run higher CYA. Will you use ORP to manage the chlorine levels?

 

[stephenson]

Had some time to do some basic research!

Looks like in bygone days, the only way to get large pool output was by using multiple SWGs - multiple controllers, power supplies, etc. Numbers were about 2# or chlorine output per day needed per 10,000 gallons of water plus or minus. However, others noted a 50,000 gallon pool need about 6 pounds per day.

Looks like several companies make larger capacity, single cell device systems now - so, only need one power supply/controller. Price of the bigger ones is about the same as multiplying the price of the smaller ones, though.

Probably comes down to total cost - how much chlorine and maintenance to install, keep adding, etc - vs cost of the SWG at around $5K or so ... some maintenance on the SWG, but looks like just acid washing occasionally.

Please let me know if I am headed in right direction on the basic cost and advantages/disadvantages.

 

[mknauss]

If you run the chemistry based on public pool standards, they tend to not allow any CYA or at most a small level of 20 ppm or so. So your SWCG will need to generate far more FC each day than a properly run residential pool SWCG.
Pentair makes manifolds for multiple SWCG's.

SWG Multiple Cells - Further Reading

www.troublefreepool.com

If the pool water chemistry is properly managed, you should never have to acid clean a SWCG. But again, if following public pool standards, they will require too high of TA levels to be reasonable such that you will get scale in the SWCG.

 

[stephenson]

Been reading - sorry - slowly getting smarter ... took some chemistry, but obviously not enough. Watched this technical training video, and it is outstanding, but way about my head. (

)

So, there are pros and cons. We have pool serviced and tested every other day in season - and once a week out of main season (north Florida). Low cost solution might still be chlorine, but I simply can't yet do the cost benefit analysis.