Which direction does a 1766 salt kit go bad?

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kchinger

Well-known member
Aug 20, 2017
295
Southeast PA
I added 800lbs salt to my pool after the 28 days of the Reno were done. 26k gallons or so. My K-1766 kit expired about a year ago, but it's saying like 5000 or 4800 ppm salt. And there's just no way, right? I should be around 3700 by the math.

I think my salt cell is saying like 3400 and it always reads low. It's just that my test kit is expired, right? Do I even need a new one or can I just use the salt cell readout and know that it reads a little low?
 
How long did you wait between adding the salt and measuring? Also, have you been running the pumps continuously and brushing to help mix the water? Did you measure the salinity of the water BEFORE adding the salt?

Depending on what chemicals were added to the water during the break in period, your salinity may have been higher than the initial fill water. Also, brackish water takes a long time to homogenize especially if the water is cold. Salt water is more dense than fresh water.
 
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Pump has been on, waited like 24 hours to test, tested again 36 hours after initial and it was the same. Temp is over 80. I didn't test the water initially but I did check the cell and it said 0 so I assumed it was close to 0 anyway.

Brushed and vacuumed a decent bit. I'm taking my sample off the top, so I assume it would be less salty if anything.

Other stuff added was acid, liquid chlorine, sequestration non stain thing, cya, and calcium chloride.
 
How have the reagents been stored? The only one that would go bad would be the titrating reagent but it usually only goes bad if it's not strewed properly - humid, cap left off or loose, stored in bright sunlight. It's a silver nitrate solution so if it goes "bad" it would give a false high reading because you would need more drops to have the same effect.

I suggest purchasing a new test kit and check the results. Or, if easier, you can buy some test strips and see if they correlate to the test kit at all.

The acid, LC and calcium chloride will all add chloride ions to the water. So your initial "salinity" was probably a few hundred ppm higher than your fill water. If you were aiming for 3700ppm, then I would imagine your water improbably closer to the low 4000's.

The SWG salinity reading can not be trusted. It's no better than +/-400ppm on a good day. The good news is, your SWG is happy with the salinity and so it will generate chlorine while you're trying to track down a more accurate reading.
 
Thanks. It's been stored in a kitchen cabinet. So it's probably fine. But I assumed it would go bad in the direction you suggested, it makes sense. I suppose it's possible I was at 1000ppm already but it seems wildly unlikely. I suppose I should order another kit just to be sure though. I replace my normal kit yearly but haven't worried about the salt kit too much since it doesn't need to be perfect.
 
JoyfulNoise said:
How have the reagents been stored? The only one that would go bad would be the titrating reagent but it usually only goes bad if it's not strewed properly - humid, cap left off or loose, stored in bright sunlight. It's a silver nitrate solution so if it goes "bad" it would give a false high reading because you would need more drops to have the same effect.

I suggest purchasing a new test kit and check the results. Or, if easier, you can buy some test strips and see if they correlate to the test kit at all.

The acid, LC and calcium chloride will all add chloride ions to the water. So your initial "salinity" was probably a few hundred ppm higher than your fill water. If you were aiming for 3700ppm, then I would imagine your water improbably closer to the low 4000's.

The SWG salinity reading can not be trusted. It's no better than +/-400ppm on a good day. The good news is, your SWG is happy with the salinity and so it will generate chlorine while you're trying to track down a more accurate reading.
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Alright, new test got here, 5400ppm.

That means that before I added my 800lbs (20 bags, I have a picture of them all lined up so I know it's 20 for sure), there was already 1600ppm or so of salt in the pool? But that requires almost 400lbs. So somehow acid, calcium chloride, and liquid chlorine for one month, all of which I can't imagine them even adding up to 400lbs, and they're far from pure salt.

Is there salt in new plaster or something? Obviously I should've measured first, but this seems ridiculous. I don't understand at all. And this is basically the same amount of salt I added when I first put the generator in and was starting from basically zero then. So I guess why didn't I start from zero this time?

The SWG is reporting 3600 for 24 hours and it's happy. Do I need to replace some water though I guess? I really hate to waste cya and calcium chloride (especially the way cya prices are right now, and the stuff I got seemed defective, it took like twice as much as it should have by weight).
 
When you test the pool water are you using a 10mL water sample or a 25mL water sample? The test requires a 10mL water sample ...
 

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Are you using a SpeedStir or Smart Stir with the test?
Are you holding the titrant bottle absolutely vertical and dispensing droplets one at a time where gravity pulls the drop of the tip (ie, not forcefully pressing on the bottle)?
The end-point of the test is the point at which the solution first turns and stays a milky, salmon, reddish color. What you'll see when you get close to the end point is the solution will "flash" the reddish color but revert back to milky yellow. As soon as the last drop makes it stay reddish (sometimes it's pink, other times it's a darker brick red, doesn't matter really), that's the end point. You're not trying to hit a specific color, just the point at which it turns and stays reddish.
 
JoyfulNoise said:
Are you using a SpeedStir or Smart Stir with the test?
Are you holding the titrant bottle absolutely vertical and dispensing droplets one at a time where gravity pulls the drop of the tip (ie, not forcefully pressing on the bottle)?
The end-point of the test is the point at which the solution first turns and stays a milky, salmon, reddish color. What you'll see when you get close to the end point is the solution will "flash" the reddish color but revert back to milky yellow. As soon as the last drop makes it stay reddish (sometimes it's pink, other times it's a darker brick red, doesn't matter really), that's the end point. You're not trying to hit a specific color, just the point at which it turns and stays reddish.
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I usually use my speedstir but I didn't earlier. I'll do that this time. I think I'm letting it fall, but I'll be extra careful.

And yeah, I'm doing the first time it stays something other than yellow.
 
5600 that time, going slower with my drops and using my speed stir and being really accurate with the ML.

I have no idea. I will say the water tasted a good bit saltier than before when it used to be around 4000. So I suspect the test is right.

I still don't understand where all the salt came from.

So I guess I need to drain, or is it ok if the salt cell is happy and I add some more CH to lower the CSI?
 
Well, it’s very weird that the salt test is reading so high and the SWG is reading normal range.

Test your tap water and see what you get. Most municipal water supplies have chloride ions in them that can be anywhere from 50 to 400ppm. So if you do a 25mL test, it should take only a couple of drops to see the color change.

How old is the SWG?
 
JoyfulNoise said:
Well, it’s very weird that the salt test is reading so high and the SWG is reading normal range.

Test your tap water and see what you get. Most municipal water supplies have chloride ions in them that can be anywhere from 50 to 400ppm. So if you do a 25mL test, it should take only a couple of drops to see the color change.

How old is the SWG?
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Tap water is maybe 80. Maybe 160 but I think it was closer to 80. It was a little hard to tell, the first drop wasn't pink or red but wasn't yellow either.

Generator has 4 seasons on it, plus a week or whatever this year. It usually runs pretty low percentages (30% for 8 hours or so per day at the peak of summer sun) since it's big for the pool. It's making chlorine at normal rates.
 
Well, it certainly appears that the test kit is working properly. I would have expected the tap water to be low because it’s honestly not in a suppliers best interest to have high chloride levels AND it’s fairly easy to remove. So most municipal suppliers stay well below the EPA limit.

Well, there’s a conundrum here - if you drain to lower salinity, your SWG may become unhappy and throw a low salt alarm which would cause it to stop generating even though the reality is that your salinity is high. But high salinity can lead to greater current draw and more wear on the cell. You could drop the salinity to just the point above where the SWG complains.

Is the salinity sensor on the CircuPool separate from the cell? How cheaply can it be replaced (maybe under warranty??). Might be worth looking at.
 
JoyfulNoise said:
Well, it certainly appears that the test kit is working properly. I would have expected the tap water to be low because it’s honestly not in a suppliers best interest to have high chloride levels AND it’s fairly easy to remove. So most municipal suppliers stay well below the EPA limit.

Well, there’s a conundrum here - if you drain to lower salinity, your SWG may become unhappy and throw a low salt alarm which would cause it to stop generating even though the reality is that your salinity is high. But high salinity can lead to greater current draw and more wear on the cell. You could drop the salinity to just the point above where the SWG complains.

Is the salinity sensor on the CircuPool separate from the cell? How cheaply can it be replaced (maybe under warranty??). Might be worth looking at.
Click to expand...

I think the sensor is in the generator part, the other piece is just a flow switch I'm pretty sure. It thinks it has 3600, and it wants between 3000 and 4000. So I think I can remove 15% maybe and it'll think it's at 3000, and I'll actually be at maybe 4500, and maybe that's close enough.

I still really don't understand where the extra salt came from. I know I should've measured first and then added half and checked, but I'm still really confused.
 
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