No Chlorine Reading In Salt Pool

by Tom

Hello, thanks for the helpful videos on the web. 1 year old salt pool, florida. 12000 gal. digital nano and rc 35/22 cell. following a cleaning of the cell, I havent been able to get a chlorine reading. the pool testing company has had me shock the system, etc. no help so far.

If you are familiar with the two terminal rc 35/22 supercell and the three hole cord plug with a "red weather plug", do you know if the cord is meant to plug in a specific way. It can plug in from both sides and I'm wondering if this is the problem.

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Thanks for the question Tom

I'm not too familiar with the 35/22 system. I know it's the AutoPilot system and I know from experience they seem to be pretty good and will give years of service. It could be the issue you have already described, plug in from both sides.

If the cell is working but you don't have chlorine then I would need to have a complete set of chemical numbers -FC, CC, pH, TA, CH, and CYA. It makes troubleshooting much easier. If you're not getting any chlorine you may be on the verge of an algae bloom and the numbers will tell us which course of action to take.

There also could be other areas that you may want to consider such as salinity, cell run time, lower or higher than 70% output percentage, power level either 1, 2, or 3. At level 3 you would need to contact AutoPilot customer support.

Hope this helps and have a great Summer.

Robert

Soft Water Fill On Salt Water Pools

by Jed
(Santa Ana, CA)

In an effort to keep the calcium hardness levels down in pools where we have filled the pool initially with 16 grain water, could I use a water softener for the make-up water?

That way the hardness levels would stay at the same level and not climb and cause all the scaling problems.

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Thanks for the question Jed

In answer is yes you can use a water softener to help lower the hardness level, but it may take some time and alot of salt.

You need to measure the flow rate of the line going from the water softener to the pool. Use a 5 gallon bucket and time how long to fill it up. Convert that to gallons/minute.

Then you should know the hardness of pool water and the soft water capacity of the water softener.
It's easiest to calculate if both are in "grains".

I believe it's this:

PPM = 17.1 X Grains. So if your water test shows 600ppm of hardness, that equals 600/17.1 = 35.1 Grains/Gallon.

So if your softener has a capacity of 35,000 grains, it means it can remove the hardness from about 1,000 gallons of pool water.

You then take the flow rate of your water softening system and calculate how many hours it will take to run 1,000 gallons to the pool.

For a normal flow rate of 5 gallons per minute, that would be 300 gallons/hour. It would take a little over 3 1/3 hours to soften 1,000 gallons to zero. You probably won't get to zero, but probably pretty close.

I don't know if you needed all of that to answer your question, but I wanted to give you more than you asked for so you could have a timeline to do your pool water softening.

Hope this helps and have a great Summer.

Robert