Testing confusion TF-100 vs pool stores

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Elemental21 said:
@Dirk I just tried it. When I let the blower hit my hand I can see really small bubbles float up but looking at the blower I can't even tell it's on unless I reach in and feel that it's on.
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Are you talking about the water exiting your returns? No matter. The hydrogen bubbles don't tell you much. They're just sort of a secondary double-check dealio. Seems your cell is OK and that you're on the right track figuring out what is consuming chlorine. Neat trick filling a removed SWG with pool water to see if it does its thing. I don't think that would work on mine, as in addition to checking salt and water temp, mine checks for flow, too. I suppose I could manually press on the flow switch, but I don't think shoving fingers into an active SWG is a good idea! ⚡+💦=☠
 
@Flying Tivo You are probably right about the organics but seems to me that if the manifold was partially obstructed, somewhere other than I've already looked, that less chlorine would be getting produced than would normally since there is built in bypass around the manifold. Same idea as all the other situations where my pressure dropped and I was producing far less chlorine but if the issue is in the manifold only I'd think it could just not be going through that part of the pipe and not registering on the pressure gauge.

I checked CYA two days ago. I'm seeing 60...maybe 65, which is kind of insane to me since I have added CYA several times throughout the season, definitely gotten it up to 75 or so then tested again and it appears to drop. This has happened at least twice this season. I've added 11.5 pounds of Clorox CYA this season. As far as I know CYA isn't supposed to drop without draining the pool, right? Does it burn off at all? I get a TON of direct sunlight. Maybe I'm just terrible at reading this test, but if that's the case then so is my wife. I know we probably don't care, but the pool guy's test strips were saying it was "high" CYA.
 
Dirk said:
Are you talking about the water exiting your returns? No matter. The hydrogen bubbles don't tell you much. They're just sort of a secondary double-check dealio. Seems your cell is OK and that you're on the right track figuring out what is consuming chlorine. Neat trick filling a removed SWG with pool water to see if it does its thing. I don't think that would work on mine, as in addition to checking salt and water temp, mine checks for flow, too. I suppose I could manually press on the flow switch, but I don't think shoving fingers into an active SWG is a good idea! ⚡+💦=☠
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Yes, the water exiting my returns.

Well the trick with the flow sensor is that he installed a secondary salt cell, which wasn't plugged in during the test, to allow the water to flow through the manifold. I was actually trying to come up withe the right PVC fittings to do what he did today at Lowes yesterday but I didn't get it quite right.
 
You'll lose CYA to splash out, too, if you got kids sending water all over the place, for example.

My SWG has a built-in flow sensor. It wouldn't matter if the other pipes were running or not. If water isn't flowing through the unit itself, it won't make chlorine. Some SWGs have a separate flow sensor, elsewhere in the plumbing. That would require the system to run so that the controller would power your cell. Something like that.

Pentair so thoughtfully puts proprietary threads on their SWGs, so there's nothing at Lowes that would fit mine. They force you to buy their crazy expensive cleaning kit, which includes a cap with those proprietary threads. That's the pool industry for ya. Might be the same for your unit?
 
Dirk said:
My SWG has a built-in flow sensor. It wouldn't matter if the other pipes were running or not. If water isn't flowing through the unit itself, it won't make chlorine. Some SWGs have a separate flow sensor, elsewhere in the plumbing. That would require the system to run so that the controller would power your cell. Something like that.

Pentair so thoughtfully puts proprietary threads on their SWGs, so there's nothing at Lowes that would fit mine. They force you to buy their crazy expensive cleaning kit, which includes a cap with those proprietary threads. That's the pool industry for ya. Might be the same for your unit?
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I see. Yeah my flow sensor is a separate cord going to a different part of the manifold.

Autopilot may have proprietary threads too, I'm not sure yet. It looks a lot like the threading in this fitting once you unscrew the two pieces in this kit but I can't find just the one part by itself:
 
I figured I'd follow up this discussion. After the pool guy left the salt cell has been working flawlessly. I was running it 12 hours a day at 100% and the chlorine was climbing fast. Once I hit 5ppm I started cutting the pump off at 8 hours. Even at 8 hours a day 100% I reached 6.5ppm yesterday. No clue why it just started working and the pool guy doesn't know either.
 
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