Pool experts aka svo

[svauto-erotic855]

^^^^^ It's not just a water chemistry problem. It is a salt problem. The salt is what is corrosive. You cannot control water chemistry when there is no water. When water splashes out of the pool and evaporates it leaves behind the salt. That salt eats everything. Salt systems also make it incredibly difficult for a non-professional to maintain water balance. It is simply part of how the salt systems produce chlorine. By the way, because of how a salt cell generates chlorine you typically have to run four to five times higher chlorine levels with a salt system to be able to have an effective sanitizer level versus what you have to keep it at if you're simply using chlorine tablets. Chlorine is very pH dependent on it's killing power. Salt systems make the pH climb out of sight in a day or two and chloramines can be in pools no matter where you get the chlorine from. It is also completely impossible to seal Natural Stone. Even the sealers themselves contain salt which is used to draw the sealer down into the pores of the Stone. Your best bet is to simply not have a salt system on the pool. Why add something that can potentially cause tens of thousands of dollars in damage? If your friend thinks that bonding helps preserve the equipment or the stonework he is out of his mind. I have used zinc sacrificial anodes before on pools that have salt systems to help prevent any problems. I also can't tell you how many pools with salt systems I've shown up to do work on and when I opened up the filter I found that the metal rods holding the filter grids together had been completely dissolved. Those rods are made out of stainless steel. In general the only people who like salt systems are the people that are trying to sell you one or sell you the repairs to the damaged the systems cause. I install them when customers insist on it but I usually do my best to talk them out of it.

I am very familiar with all of the automation products on the market and install a few per month. They are not worthwhile unless you have something to automate. If you just have a pool with nothing else having an automation system is useless. Why would you want to turn on your filter pump at your house when you're in London? FYI, that Hayward system you sent a link to is a piece of junk. Hayward has tried many times over the years to make a good controller and they fall flat on their faces every time. I typically install a Jandy iaqualink. I actually installed one this morning and I have another one scheduled towards the end of this month.

Dual speed pumps and variable speed pumps are not the same thing and I'm acutely aware of the changes coming to the industry. On pools with a DE filter my plan is to buy and install a two speed pump and never run it on the low speed. Your best bet to save energy is not going with a variable speed pump, it is going with a pump that has an efficient motor and that is properly sized. If you just do that you've accomplished about 80% of the savings potential. As I stated previously, most pools have way too large of a pump on them. The people that dream up the new regulations for pools don't work in the pool industry and they're the same idiots that made Jerry cans illegal because they thought they knew better.

[kingjason]

DE filter's require a hard hit or surge in water flow the instant the pump starts and no variable speed pump on the market provides what it needs. Since you only have experience dealing with one filter you do not see the difference in performance that I do.

Nearly every pool that I look at has too big of a pump. There is nothing wrong with running a single speed motor on a pump as long as the pump is appropriately sized for the pool, the plumbing, and the filter. There are some inherent differences between the type of motor that is used on a variable speed pump and the motor that is on a regular pump. The variable speed motors are a permanent magnet motor instead of an inductive one and there are energy savings to be had from that style of motor that cannot be accomplished otherwise.

When mine fires off, it primes, or cranks way up for about 20 seconds. Not good enough? I honestly have no idea, I just know my water is crystal clear and I only reload it every four or five months. My mom has had a giant aluminum sand filter and single speed pump since the late 70's or early 80's. That bastard is still chugging along believe it or not. Well, not the pump but the filter. They have changed the sand, maybe three times in it. Ill ask her in a bit, but pretty sure. I know I was like 8 or so when Blue Haven put it in.

[svauto-erotic855]

When mine fires off, it primes, or cranks way up for about 20 seconds. Not good enough? I honestly have no idea, I just know my water is crystal clear and I only reload it every four or five months. My mom has had a giant aluminum sand filter and single speed pump since the late 70's or early 80's. That bastard is still chugging along believe it or not. Well, not the pump but the filter. They have changed the sand, maybe three times in it. Ill ask her in a bit, but pretty sure. I know I was like 8 or so when Blue Haven put it in.

The variable speed pumps ramp up to their top speed over a few seconds and will typically prime for a preset amount of time running at about 3450 RPM. There are adjustments in the software for how quickly the speed can ramp up but it's typically maxed out at 400 RPM per second and you can change the amount of time that the pump is priming. A regular pump is full blast the second it gets power. This makes a difference in how the grids get recoated with DE every time the pump starts up. You only notice the difference if you have taken care of thousands of pools with DE filters and regular pumps. The backwash and cleaning cycles change dramatically with a variable speed pump versus a conventional pump if you have a DE filter.

[Big A]

My family prefers the less harsh saltwater, and for automation it's as simple as being able to monitor and make changes to chemistry, and being able to turn on the Polaris from the comfort of my home. Especially convenient here in the rainy winter months.

As bad as you make it sound SVO, I'm surprised the government still lets us have saltwater pools.

[svauto-erotic855]

My family prefers the less harsh saltwater, and for automation it's as simple as being able to monitor and make changes to chemistry, and being able to turn on the Polaris from the comfort of my home. Especially convenient here in the rainy winter months.

As bad as you make it sound SVO, I'm surprised the government still lets us have saltwater pools.

The automation systems that make changes to water chemistry are typically reserved for commercial pools because of their extremely high cost. The most useful function for a pool automation system is to turn the valves for the hot tub and to turn the heater on to a preset level. If you don't have a hot tub having an automation system is kind of pointless. Salt water is not less harsh than a pool chlorinated with tablets. The problem is most people have no idea how to handle water chemistry in their pool and a salt system masks that but at the same time it's doing things that are extremely detrimental to the pool. Hayward does make a system that piggybacks with salt systems to control the pH but the sensors used that measure ph are poor quality and the system does not work very well. Outside of dumping salt everywhere the most damaging thing that a salt system does is it raises the pH dramatically. A relatively small pool of around 15,000 gallons using a salt system will need about 2 gallons of muriatic acid per week to control the pH. It would be best if the pH was measured on a daily basis and adjusted but that's never the case. Because most pools are only looked in on once per week you have to add all of the acid at once which plummets the pH into an unsafe range just so it doesn't climb to a dramatically higher unsafe range before you make it back the next week. Pools with salt systems never have stable water chemistry and it is inherent in how the systems produce chlorine. I've been in thousands of backyards and I've noticed that every pool with a salt system has heavily damaged pool equipment from the system not to mention all of the damage to the stone around the pool and to the plaster. You simply cannot have hundreds of pounds of salt dissolved into a solution without expecting damage from that salt. I have seen pools that are maintained by the homeowner destroyed in less than a year because of salt systems.

The government in many cities has already outlawed salt water pools and salt water water softening systems.

Why not just let your Polaris turn itself on everyday with a simple mechanical time clock instead of a $3,000 automated system that is simply a toy if the only thing it is automating is the Polaris?

Edit: You can do whatever you want with your own pool. I only offer advice based off of my experience which is pretty extensive. I make those recommendations based on longevity, ease of service, and cost.

Edit: I I want you to think through my position on this subject. If someone wants a salt system I will profit about $900 to install a product that takes me about an hour and a half to do. There is a consumer demand for those systems. By not installing them or talking people out of installing them I'm taking money out of my own pocket. I would not be taking that money out of my pocket if I did not know that the systems were harmful. Other people are not as ethical as I am or simply are not aware of the downside.

[Stephen]

Pools = rich people problems!

[svauto-erotic855]

Pools = rich people problems!

Yep, and my clients are rich.

[svauto-erotic855]

My family prefers the less harsh saltwater

Come to think of it, I bet you also believed it when the manufacturer of the product told you Slick 50 was going to make your car last forever.

[mustang_revival]

Fuck a pool. After 14 years of having one I'm ready to fill mine in.

[Big A]

Come to think of it, I bet you also believed it when the manufacturer of the product told you Slick 50 was going to make your car last forever.

I've swam in many pools over the years, and prefer salt water, has nothing to do with marketing.

[fordracing19]

Fuck a pool. After 14 years of having one I'm ready to fill mine in.

Wish I had never built mine 3 years ago.

Sent from my SM-N950U using Tapatalk

[jewozzy]

On a side note.... If I wanted to add new lighting and need to replaster my pool anyway, would that be the time to do it? I want to add some LED lighting in both my hot tub and a few of the small lights going around the pool.

[svauto-erotic855]

I've swam in many pools over the years, and prefer salt water, has nothing to do with marketing.

If done correctly there's no difference in what you can feel or smell between a pool that gets its chlorine from tablets added to a dispenser or a pool that gets its chlorine from a cell that uses electrolysis to separate the chlorine from the sodium chloride. The problem is that so few people know how to do it correctly and that a pool with a saltwater chlorinating system has such rapid changes in water chemistry that are difficult to keep up with even if you check it and adjust it daily.

Did you know that in a normal pool I can keep the chlorine levels at just under one part per million without having any water clarity issues or algae growth problems? In a pool with a salt water chlorination system I'm lucky if I can keep the chlorine levels below 7 or 8 parts per million without having water clarity or algae issues if it is only seen by a technician once per week.

[Nash B.]

[svauto-erotic855]

On a side note.... If I wanted to add new lighting and need to replaster my pool anyway, would that be the time to do it? I want to add some LED lighting in both my hot tub and a few of the small lights going around the pool.

You can upgrade the lights at anytime. Typically I can swap 2 fixtures in under 2 hours. Sometime I will replace/repair some electrical stuff at the sametime.