Ordering A Water Delivery Truck
Its going to be quicker but more expensive than using your hose. A typical water delivery truck can deliver between 3,000 9,000 gallons of water at one time depending on their service and how much you require so you might only need 2-3 trucks brought in.
Pros: Quicker than using a garden hose. One truck may take around 45 minutes to empty so a complete pool fill may be 2-3 hours total. You often dont need to be home when water is delivered. Some delivery companies will deliver pre-chlorinated water that may reduce the chemicals you need to add.
Cons: More expensive. If you find a leak or problem with your pool, you may have to pay extra to have the water service come back after having the problem fixed.
Cost:Ive found online rates for .10 per gallon for 4000 gallons or .09 per gallon for 6200 gallons or more. So an 18,000 gallon pool would cost $1,620 to fill.
What Should Cyanuric Acid Levels Be In Pools
The two most important factors to consider in terms of balancing your cyanuric acid levels are whether your pool uses a salt water generator and how much direct sunlight your pool receives. We will discuss the former in the next section, so feel free to skip ahead if you use a salt water generator to sanitize your pool.The energy contained in UV light from the sun causes the hypochlorous acid and hypochlorite ions formed from the reaction of chlorine and water to break apart in a process called photolysis. Learn more in our article What is Cyanuric Acid?If your pool receives more direct sunlight, more free chlorine will be lost due to photolysis. One way to combat this is by adding more chlorine, more frequently. However, that is both expensive and time consuming. A better approach is to keep your cyanuric acid levels slightly elevated between 60 and 80 ppm. This also means will want to keep your free chlorine levels elevated between 4 and 5 ppm.
What Is The Ideal Salt Level For A Pool
ideal salt leveloptimalsaltpoolsalt level
. Besides, what happens if salt level is too high in pool?
An overly salted pool will generally not be a major problem , but at levels over 6000 ppm there may be corrosion damage to some of the metallic equipment. If you have tested the salt water levels and there is too much salt in your pool, here’s what you need to know.
Subsequently, question is, how long after adding salt to pool Can you swim? It is recommended to wait at least 20 minutes to an hour after adding water balancing chemicals. You should wait 2-4 hours to swim from the moment you use calcium chloride in your pool. It is safe to swim once your chlorine levels are around 5 ppm or after 24 hours.
Just so, how much salt does my pool need calculator?
Ideally, the recommended salt levels fall between 2700-3400 parts per million . However, each salt chlorine generator is different. Therefore, the minimum salt level needed for operation varies.
How do you make a 3000 ppm salt solution?
A simple salt solution standard that will give about 3000 ppm is to mix two packets of Wendy’s salt to 16 oz .
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How To Lower Salt Levels In A Pool
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Saltwater pools need a lot of sodium to operate properly, but excessively salty water can lead to corrosive and harmful side-effects. Though you cant simply remove sodium from your pool water, you can make the water safe to swim in by diluting it to a more appropriate level.
Converting To A Salt Water Pool
To convert a traditional chlorine pool to a salt water pool, you dont need to drain the pool, or do anything special. Besides normal and good water balance, all you need for a salt water pool is a chlorine generator and enough pool salt to raise the level to the salt system manufacturers recommendation.
You will still need to maintain good water balance on a salt water pool. Your pool pH, Alkalinity and Calcium Hardness must be maintained by testing and adjusting the levels as needed, just as with a traditional chlorine pool. You will also still need to use cyanuric acid, or chlorine stabilizer, to control UV chlorine degradation, and prevent overworking your salt cell.
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How To Determine The Correct Swcg Percentage Setting
To know the right SWCG percentage setting to produce the ideal level of chlorine for your pool, you have to be aware of few things and they are:-
1). Determine the right FC level for your pool. FCL in your water goes hand in hand with the level of Cyanuric acid in your water.
2). Measure the actual FCL in your water and compare it with the appropriate FCL in your SWCG. Testing FC level should be done in the evening so that when it’s low, you adjust your chlorine generator percentage setting appropriately.
3). If the level of FC in your water is low, increase the percentage of your SWCG to produce more chlorine and reduce the percentage if the FCL is high.
4). If the FC level is not balanced within an hour, wait for 48 hours and repeat steps 2 and 3 until your FCL is balanced with the Cyanuric acid level in your water.
First Step To Lowering Your Pools Salt Levels
Many experts will say that testing the pool water is the first step to lowering the salt levels in your pool, but here, we recommend topping up your pool water first to its recommended levels before testing. The only way to get proper readings for salt levels is to get a reading with your water levels at the pools rated capacity. This way youll have a good baseline to get your pools true salt readings.
Once youve topped off your pool water to its optimal levels, allow your pump to run for one whole cycle or a day to make sure that everything is properly circulated. Once thats done, then you can proceed with testing the pool water with some salt water testing strips. Sometimes all thats needed is a fresh water top-up!
While some salt water chlorinators have some built-in indicators for salt levels, if you really want to get an accurate level then test strips are the way to go. Your chlorinator readings can be skewed by a number of things like dirty salt water cells, damaged leads and so on.
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Why Is Free Chlorine Level High/low In My Saltwater Pool
Like you learned earlier, you need to measure and adjust the FC level in your water by adjusting the percentage settings in your saltwater chlorine generator.
The higher you set the percentage in your saltwater generator, the more chlorine it will produce, and the more FCL will be high in your water.
You only need to raise FCL when it’s low or reduce it when high and that should be done in the percentage settings of your chlorine generator after taking FC reading.
As such, never adjust your SWCG before measuring and knowing the level of FC in your water.
Maintaining Your Saltwater Pool At The Right Level
When you want to properly maintain your saltwater pool and keep salinity at the right level, the sensors available through Sensorex can help you with this goal. With these sensors, you can conduct weekly or even daily readings to determine if the salt concentration in your pool is at or around 3,000 PPM. If the readings are too low or too high, you will be able to react quickly before the pool becomes damaged in some way.
When salt levels are too low, you may have difficulty avoiding the development of bacteria. The presence of bacteria in the pool can negatively affect your health and may cause you to become sick. High salt levels can also damage some of the metallic equipment in your pool. As such, its important that you maintain the correct salt levels.
If you would like to purchase one of our conductivity sensors like the CS150TC or SensoPro, contact Sensorex today to learn more about how these sensors can benefit you or about the other products we offer!
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Get Your Pool Water Volume
Nex, figure out the amount of water in your pool. If you built your pool from scratch then you probably know this number off by heart. The majority of backyard pools fall somewhere between 10,000 and 20,000 gallons.
If you dont know, you can use an equation to figure it out.
- Rectangular Pools: Length x Width x Average Depth x 7.5 = Volume
- Circular Pools: Diameter x Diameter x Average Depth x 5.9 = Volume
- Oval Pools: Length x Width x Average Depth x 6.7 = Volume
For example, if you have a large rectangular 32 foot x 16 foot pool, with a 4 foot depth in the shallow end, and 8 foot depth in the deep end , the water volume will be 23,040 gallons.
Computing How Much Water We Need To Take Out
Once we have your pools total water volume and the actual salt reading then we can go ahead with calculating how much water well need to take out to effectively reduce the salt levels to their recommended levels. As an example, lets just say that you have 4,500 PPM of salt currently in your pool and you have a 40,000 L pool.
*Note: If your pools salt water concentration is just a couple of hundred PPM higher than the recommended levels, then its okay to leave it, but for values 500PPM or more from the recommended levels then partially draining is the way to go.
Step One: Divide your current reading by the recommended salt water concentration. For this example, the recommended level is 2,500 to 3,500 so lets just get the high end of the recommended level, 3,500.
4,500 PPM / 3,500 PPM = 1.29
We want this number as close to 1 as possible, so we take the value above 1, in this case .29 and we multiply it with our pools volume.
.29 x 40,000L = 11,600L
This means that in order to reduce the PPM of our water down to its recommended level, we have to drain out 11,600L of water and replace it with fresh water.
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Water Testing In A Salt Water Pool
Just like any other pool, you will need a good test kit to monitor chlorine and water balance levels. Most importantly, the pH and chlorine level should be tested at least once per week. Salt chlorine generators can be set to a certain output level, but temperature and weather changes can use more chlorine than is created, so you must test the pool chlorine level in a salt water pool, and adjust the output as needed.
In addition to testing a salt water pool for pH, Alkalinity, Calcium Hardness and Cyanuric Acid, you also now need to test the salinity level, or the amount of salt in the pool, in parts per million, or ppm. Many inground units monitor salt level and some display the salt level or have Low Salt indicator lights, but testing with salt test strips is still a good idea, to calibrate or double-check the salt sensor.
Know When To Replace The Salt Cell
In some ways, a salt cell is analogous to a car tire its a consumable part that slowly wears out as it works. Accordingly, theres not really any benefit from replacing your SCGs cell early. Getting the longest life out of your cell means getting the most return on your investment.
When a cell is depleted, the SCGs controller typically displays an error message or warning light as mentioned previously, such errors can sometimes be displayed due to other related issues. These are seven troubleshooting checks you should perform before replacing your cell in order to eliminate the possibility of other minor fixable issues being the cause. Unlike a car tire, you cannot visually see when a salt cell is worn out so dont even try. Use these tried and true methods instead:
-
If your model has different cell type settings on the SCGs electronic controller, ensure that this setting has not inadvertently been changed. Youll need to refer to the manufacturers documentation to do this, but its a final item to check which can cause a false error.
- Check how old your cell is. How many summers has it been since this cell was put into operation? Is it nearly as old or older than the length of its warranty period?
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Use A Handheld Electronic Meter
You can also choose to test the salt level in your pool using a handheld electronic meter. In that case, youll turn the electronic meter on and then dip the pen-style meter into your pool water while your electronic meter analyzes it. Some handheld meter systems work by requiring the user to fill a small plastic cup with pool water fitted into the testing meter.
Electronic testing meters are a newer method of testing your pool water that is generally accurate as long as they are correctly calibrated before measuring your pool. The primary advantage with a digital pool meter is that they perform many other tests that many liquid reagent kits cannot, such as the total dissolved solids test.
Most electronic testing meters have a small margin of error, so if you choose to use one, youll need to remember that the numbers you see are directionally accurate, even if they are slightly off. Handheld electronic meters are most effective when you use them alongside pH and liquid reagent tests.
Risks Of High Salinity
While there arent many harmful effects of having too much salt in your pool water, its possible that the salt will become corrosive with readings above 6,000 PPM, which can be damaging to any metallic equipment in the pool. This equipment usually includes any handrails and ladders in the pool. Its also important to note that certain salt water generators wont turn on if the salinity of your pool water isnt between 3,000-4,000 PPM, which will make it difficult for you to maintain the right salinity.
Its important to maintain the salt levels of your pool because of the many benefits that saltwater pools can provide at the right salinity levels. For instance, water in a saltwater pool typically feels softer than water in a standard chlorine pool. Saltwater also produces its own chlorine, which means that theres no reason for you to store this chemical. When you use an electrical conductivity sensor for your saltwater pool, you may need to take action if the salt levels are below 3,000 PPM or higher than 6,000 PPM.
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Ially Draining Your Pool Water
While you can use your pool pump to drain out the water by setting your sand filter to the waste position or using the drain valve if using a cartridge filter, we dont really recommend it for draining large amounts of water that will cause your water levels to drop below the skimmer levels as this can cause your pump to lose prime and/or burn out when it runs dry. You can either get a small submersible pump to do this or use our favorite tool when it comes to draining water, a venturi pump.
A venturi pump doesnt use your pools pump, instead it uses regular water pressure from your garden hose so its a very efficient way to drain your pool if you ever need to lower your water levels for any reason. A venturi pump can remove an average of 3,025 to 3,400 litres of water per hour. So using the example above, well need to use the Venturi pump for roughly 3-and-a-half hours to effectively drain around 11,600L of water from our pool.
How To Test Saltwater Pool Salinity
This relatively simple maintenance task will ensure a proper saltwater pool salinity level, preventing unnecessary costs and bacteria growth. You should be able to find out how much salt is in your pool through a display on your salt chlorine generator. If your generator does not have the information, there are various test kits on the market. Most of these devices require gathering a sample of water and reading the test results.
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A Few Facts About Saltwater Pools
The salt added to your pool will never dissipate on its own. Only during backwash, splashing, or draining your pool will salt need to be added.
Salt will not leave your pool from evaporation or running your salt system.
Always keep an eye on the overall salt level of the water but keep in mind that once you reach your ideal levels, it will be hard to lose them. Thats the beauty of having a saltwater pool.
Water Chemistry For Saltwater Pools
BLOG UPDATED 9/25/17
Some pool owners have a misconception that throwing shock into the pool and owning a salt chlorine generator forfeits you from having to deal with chemicals again. Unfortunately, this is not the case. Yes, you will worry less about certain chemicals, but the importance of a well-balanced pool remains.
Before attempting to operate your new saltwater chlorine generator, there are a few steps every pool owner should follow to ensure the best use of your system. Did you know that before you even operate your unit, salt must be added to your pool? Actually, you should evaluate your pools water chemistry as a whole. A properly balanced pool is not only essential to the performance of your chlorine generator but also important in protecting your pool equipment and swimmers from other potentially dangerous situations.
To help out new salt chlorine generator owners, weve created a chemical quick start guide before operating your chlorine generator.
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