Intex Salt Water system newbie

Hi all.

We've enjoyed our 16'x48" Intex Ultra Frame pool now for the past two years. We purchased an Intex Salt Water system and are having a couple of issues:

1. I used the requisite 125 lbs of salt. I used Morton's Pool Salt. I noticed small black pebble things in the bags as I was pouring the salt in. After I made sure that the salt was dissolved I noticed that the black pebble things were still in the water. I also noticed small white pebble things in the water. At first I thought that they were just impurities and that I just had to clean them out. Now I'm wondering if they're a result of something (of what I do not know). The Morton Salt rep. stated that their pool salt is 100% pure. I raised an eyebrow at that.

Has anyone here used Morton Pool Salt? Any idea what the pebble things are?

2. I'm finding it hard to maintain the chlorine levels without running the system 24x7. I believe it's related to the pool cover we're using. I made a pool cover out of thick clear plastic. The cover helps heat up the pool nicely on sunny days. But, I think the UV light is burning away the chlorine faster than the unit can make it. My wife thinks there's a different reason why we're having chlorine problems (like the unit is broken). I've read that cyanuric acid can help maintain chlorine levels. I was hoping to limit chemical usage to the bare minimum.

Does anyone have any suggestions on how to maintain chlorine levels? Is cyanuric acid the answer?

Thanks in advance.

Hi, and welcome to the forum!

I can't answer your questions about the salt, because I don't (yet) have a SWCG. However, I can tell you that most SWCGs require higher levels of CYA (around 80 ppm or so) in order for the cell to work at its most efficient, and to keep the chlorine in the water. You need to check your owner's manual to see what CYA level the manufacturer of your unit specifies. The CYA acts as "sunscreen' for your chlorine, protecting it against being consumed by the sun, and keeping it in the pool to work on nasties in your pool water. So..if you haven't added CYA, you definitely need to. As for not keeping chlorine in the pool, it could be that the sun is just eating it up too fast, or that your unit isn't working properly (you can take a sample from your return while it's running and it should give you a test result for chlorine if the unit is working), or it could be that you have an algae bloom trying to start that you just can't yet see. To identify that, you need to test for chlorine at night after the sun is off the pool, assuming your SWCG doesn't run at night, and then test again in the morning before the sun is on the pool. If you've lost more than 1 ppm chlorine in that time, then you need to shock the pool to get rid of whatever's eating your chlorine. The SWCG won't be able to shock the pool for you, even with a "superchlorinate" mode. You'll need to use another form of chlorine, preferably plain, unscented bleach.

Hope this helps...