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Salt Plus Chlor Choc?


JJ
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I have a salt water pool, when the dreaded algae appear I add some Chlor Choc tabs, I also use algaecide on a regular basis. This normally does the trick for a few days.

My question is can you use chlor choc tabs in conjunction with a salt water chlorination system, I ask because the guy in my pool supplies shop said that you should not?

Any ideas gratefully recieved.

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Jim and Gail

I really cannot believe what you have just said.

'Some person in a pool shop said that you cannot use choc with a salinator.'

I can't think why they would say that.... its just nonsense.

Salt/chlorine and chlorine/direct pools both need choc when they get so far out of balance that normal treatment will not help. Super chlorination is a safe and effective method to recover your pool. It will raise the chlorine to 8 or 9 ppm temporarily and wipe out every microbe in your water and be consumed in the process leaving your filter to extract the residual and your water to clear. After which you resume normal sanitation.

I would advise you to use algaecides sparingly as they will increase the copper residual and the Total dissolved solids (TDS)in your water which is very bad. The only sure remedy for which is near complete change of water.

To give you a bit more background, chlorine generators using salt are accepted in this country even if they are on the way out in other countries for environmental reasons. However they produce chlorine and this is generally accepted as the only safe method to sanitise the water. Other systems and compounds are less successful and more dangerous for health and worst of all, more expensive. By and large though your objective if you are interested in the health and pool maintenance issues is to use just enough chlorine for the 'bather load'. Any more chlorine and you are adding to TDS not to mention chloramine (smell, taste, yuck) any less and you run the risk of infections from living bacteria. SO just enough is your target.

If you get it wrong .... Choc

Andrew

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Andrew,

Many thanks for your most informative reply, I am glad that I have not got it too far wrong. Your response was most helpful.

This forum is an absolute godsend for those of us not in the know.

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[quote]Jim and Gail I really cannot believe what you have just said. 'Some person in a pool shop said that you cannot use choc with a salinator.' I can't think why they would say that.... its just nonsens...[/quote]

This is the first time that I have heard about salt water pools being phased out in other countries due to environmental reasons. Can you please enlighten me?

I believe I am right in saying that some 90% of Australian pools are salt water (as is ours), and I would hate to go back to a chlorine pool.

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Hello again Majic and others

 

Thanks for your addition to this thread, as before, there are some differences of opinion which we have to discuss.

 

Firstly I would like to deal with the scene in Australia as it is amongst the exemplar countries with respect to the pool and spar industry, both standards, technologically and best practice.

 

In Australia, the proportion of Salt /Chlorine versus Chlorine direct has not changed from the last time I answered this question. So to be more direct, I quote from Mr. Richard Norrish who past general Manger of Monarch Industries who manufacture Eco-matic which is one of the leading brands of Salt Chlorinators worldwide. Certainly Richard is very well place to accurately estimate the penetration his and other manufactures have in the vast Australian marketplace. He assures me that, for substantial INGOUND pools the proportion of salt/Chlorine: Direct Chlorine is no more than 60:30 with the Ionizers, UV and other systems making up the remainder. If the total number of pools is taken in into account which include small above ground pools then the number changes to more like 40:55. This is certainly nothing like the figure you have quoted and (again) I would like to know the source you have for this number.

 

The Second proposition relates to my claim that ‘Salt/Chlorination is on the way out for environmental reasons’. To Answer this I quote directly from ‘Pool & Spa Industry Review’(Australia) July 2005. Alan Lewis, who is a Pool consultant from Aquazure, wrote the Article titled “A strategy for recycling backwash discharge of swimming pool water” It begins,

 

“While three quarters of the earth’s surface is water, only one percent is available for drinking. Unsafe drinking water and inadequate sanitation cause eighty percent of all sickness and disease in the world. WHO estimates that 25,000 deaths per day, world wide, are due to contaminated water. Essentially, swimming water must be good enough to drink because eventually some swimmers will ingest water while swimming. ….So this water should lend itself to recycling……In the last 20 years over 420,000 domestic pools have been built in the major cities in Australia. Conservative estimates claim that this has doubled the national total. From this we can deduce that their collective volume would now be in the vicinity of 42,000 Mega Litres of swimming water. The 2004 Summary of the ATSE Report on Water recycling in Australia claims that residential gardens in these major cities use 414,000 ML per year, which represents 20% of total urban use.

 

The vast majority of swimming pools in this country are equipped with sand filters. Well maintained, sanitized fresh water pools, require regular backwashing of the sand filter, resulting in the dumping of roughly the total volume of the pool per year. The replacement of this water will come most commonly, from town water supply. In general terms this total volume replacement water represents roughly a significant 10% of the urban garden demands of Australia’s 22 largest cities…..

 

This discussion cannot be pursued further without an in depth re-assessment of the now common practice of chlorination of swimming pools – particularly domestic pools by way of electrolytic salt chlorination. Thankfully there is now a move away from this form of chlorination because of long-term damage by the salt water is now more commonly factored into the maintenance cost. Basically, salt chlorination as it is now practiced, renders the pool water inappropriate for application in this strategy. However more thought and better design of the electrolysis plant could lead to a low level salt chlorination as a supplements to the straight use of pre-manufactured Sodium Hypochlorinde. The level of TDS (Total Dissolved Solids) in such a pool would have to be commensurate with normative chlorine dosing and allow for recycling of backwash water for irrigation of salt tolerant ornamentals (plants).

 

The downside of salt chlorination can be summarized as follows:

a)      The detrimental ecological effects on the environment particularly form backwash water.

b)     

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