Yet another salt pool problem!

[Gyn_Paul]

Poor Andrew; yet another hopeless divvi seeking your expert advice :

Salt pool a year old (Intex oval, above ground 24'x12'x4'). Worked fine last year.  This year it was fine for a bit but then said code 91 (low salt) so I added a 25kg bag, let it dissolve. STILL low salt . Added a bowlful more.. STILL low salt. repeat  repeat  now it's tasting very salty and - given that I've not replaced any of the water since it was working fine - 40-odd kg seems an awful lot to have to add.

So leave it all for a day, scratch head and have a think about it. Turn it all on again, dial in another 12 hours and now it's saying High salt !

So leave it overnight and then  - of course it says low salt again. Take electroliser apart and inspect it... seems ok.. with clear spaces between the plates (although there's a thin film of black on the outer plates ). Hose it all out and re-assemble and set going now high salt (of course!).  This seems intuitively right, so bleed off a bit of water and add some fresh at the same time. Set the electroliser going ever 10 minutes or so and it manages to go seemlessly from hight to low with no interviening period of just right.

I'm now at my wit's end..

Any thoughts?

paul

[Poolguy]

Paul

Yet another poor fellow with a problem with their salt system(.... not surprising).

I am more surprised however that you cannot get help from the pool shop where you bought the machine from in the first place - but suppose that shouldn't surprise me as service apres vente is notoriously dreadful in France.

So to be of some help I suggest first that you test your water for salt level, using the little test strips you can get at any BRICO, it should read somewhere between 3500 and 6000ppm but in general it should match the requirements of electrolser (see instructions). Dose to suite.

Then you should clean BOTH the electorlytic plates and the probe in acid, as I suspect that one or the other is on the Fritz because of contamination of some sort. If you get don't get a 'dicky bird' from that then you have a more serious problem by way of equipment failure, and not just maintence requirement ( which they need a lot off)

Hope that this is of some help but PM me if you need more specific advice.

Andrew

[Gyn_Paul]

Thanks Andrew, I've PM'd you wit a few further Q's.

p

[Deby]

Do saltwater pools suffer from algae?  The local Chauff Sanit states that salt pools seem to suffer these problems after a hot period followed by rain storms - promotes the bacteria. 

Can you over clean a pool? What causes algae?  How can you avoid it.  Sorry if this has been covered before but the search facility is slow and my notebook is not very user friendly at the moment - must be the heat!

Deby

[Poolguy]

Deby

To answer your questions, I can sum it up in a few words; water is life.

That is, where there is water, there is life. Life as we know it cannot exist

without water, and it is constantly searching for it.

So if you are custodian of a large body of water then you will be sharing it

with all manner of life; large, small, minute and microscopic.

What we are seeking to do with our swimming pools, is to exclude or rather

discourage all forms of life save ourselves by making it sterile with

sanitizers.The compounds we use are very effective but are also unstable and need

monitoring and topping up on a regular basis. Failure to keep the levels

required for a sterile environment will therefore fail to suppress the

abundance of life, which then gains a hold. The basics of which are already in

the water and being introduced every second the water body is exposed to the

air and other contaminants.

Whatever system you choose to use, it is not infallible and cannot be left to

its devices as, nature will overtake it sooner or later. So what we are doing

is against nature? Yes that is correct- It is unnatural to want to sterilize

water but its what we must do to hope a body of water in one place, whereas

nature would have it flow and refresh, we cannot afford that as water costs.

Concomitantly, whilst we desire the pleasure of our own private water body then

, we are obliged to employ one or other ingenious method to confound entropy

and maintain precious water out of the reach of other life. If you lose

attention of a moment however, you must share with all comers who will also

enjoy the pleasure of this precious body of water.

As for electrical storms, I am led to believe that

electrically charged ions cause by static electricity in the atmosphere will

‘burn off’ chlorine, in much the same way its produced in your electrolyser.

The effect of which is that the chlorine level in you pool will descend rapidly

during the build-up to a storm, this will result in algae and other moving in

where a gap has been left.

Over cleaning the water?????? Do you mean by that 'over sanitise' or 'over

filter' as both are involved in cleaning. The answer to the first is Yes you

can and its can be a very serious problem, whereas the answer to the second is

that no you cannot and it is absolutly essential.

More later if you require it.

Andrew

[Buzby]

We also have problems with our salt pool electrolyser, made by

Irrijardin and already installed when we bought the house. It keeps

showing "add salt", even though the salt level, which we have had

analysed separately, is at the top end of the recommended range. I have

removed the cell, cleaned it carefully but omitted to clean the little

pin in the lid, which I presume is used to measure the salt level? In

the meantime, I checked the DC current flowing to the cell, and this

varied from 1 amp to about 4.5 amps, depending on the level I set with

the switch, and this seems to be the case regardless of whether the

"add salt" warning is on or not. So, I am assuming, for the moment,

that the "add salt" warning does not prevent the cell from working, and

will shortly tear it all apart again and clean everything. My plates

also are black, but I assume that is how they should be? I am extremely

reluctant to pay out any more money on this pool, which is already

costing a small fortune to maintain, so will plough on with the

existing equipment until a major rethink is unavoidable.

And so to a second problem. The two legged pool cleaners in our

household have gone on strike, so we bought a Dolphin pool cleaner,

electrically operated. This worked brilliantly - for two weeks. Then it

would stop after shorter and shorter intervals, usually while in a

corner of the pool trying to achieve the impossible (it's supposed to

keep working for about three hours as it moves randomly round the

pool), and finally it would work for no more than 5 minutes. We went

back to the guy who supplied it, who, much to my surprise, replaced it

with another one - unusual for France. This then worked brilliantly for

about three weeks, before it too started misbehaving. Back to the

supplier, who now had no replacement and both faulty units have gone

back to the factory. I am not optimistic about seeing a replacement

until after the holidays at the earliest.

I'd be interested to hear if anyone else has any experience of these

Dolphin pool cleaners (www.dolphin-swimming-pool-cleaners.com). A brief

telephone call to the factory revealed that it was a programming

problem in the power supply, and there was nothing the owner or the guy

who supplied it could do; it had to be returned to the factory.

Meanwhile, guess who's having to clean the pool....