Question about adding Epsom salts to Inground pool

Hi,

New here and had some questions. I have an in ground gunite pool, and have the Goldline/Hayward SWC system. I just tested my water and the readings are below.

Pool Volume 21,000 gallons with side spa
Pentair intelliflow multi speed pump

PH 7.4
Total CL 5 +ppm
CYA 30 PPM
TDS 3000 PPM
Salt=2900 PPm
Borax (50PPM?)

OK, so I just replaced my Salt Cell, it had reached its life span and wasn't producing. Doing some research I saw a recommendation from an Austrailian SWG manufacturer that recommends adding a bag of Epsom salts to the pool water every year to soften deposits on the Salt Cell and it extends its lifetime. Has anyone heard of that ? Safe for humans ? I have a 50lb bag in the garage. The pool store guy said he never heard of such a thing, and of course they never heard of adding Borax either. Thanks for any advise

That is exactly the opposite of what you would want to do to minimize scaling in the SWG cell. Epsom salt is magnesium sulfate so while the magnesium would not scale the way that calcium does, the sulfate produces a much harder to remove scale. If you wanted to minimize scaling through use of a different kind of salt, then you would want to get magnesium chloride instead.

However, there are other ways to prevent scaling in the salt cell such as proper control of pH, Total Alkalinity (TA), and Calcium Hardness (CH) levels and the use of 50 ppm Borates which it sounds like you have already added to the pool (either from a combination of borax and acid or from boric acid directly).

Thanks. Yes I do keep 50 PPM borax from the advice I have seen here. The reason I ask is that Watermaid recommends the Magnesium Sulfate, even though I don't have a Watermaid unit, My thinking is it would also apply to the American made SWG's. Can I start adding Magnesium Chloride even though I have regular Solar Salt, or would I need to dump the pool water and start over ?

If you were to add magnesium chloride, that would increase your total conductivity and overall salt level to be too high. You would need to replace some of your water and then add some magnesium chloride essentially substituting sodium chloride for magnesium chloride.

However, I really think this is completely unnecessary and is probably expensive as well. Just keep your calcite saturation index slightly negative -- not higher than -0.2 for example -- and between that and your use of 50 ppm Borates you shouldn't see any flakes from your SWCG and it shouldn't need cleaning very often. Basically if you can avoid formation of calcium carbonate scale, your cell should last longer. Note that you still need to have calcium in your pool because it is concrete, but it is true that with more magnesium in the water as well that the formation of calcium scale will tend to be softer incorporating some magnesium into it, sort of like defects. Magnesium carbonate itself, however, won't directly scale/precipitate since it's solubility product is around 2000 times higher than that of calcium carbonate.

However, note that an SWCG cell will die eventually anyway even if there is no calcium carbonate scale at all. People with low CH pools such as vinyl pools using an SWCG still have to replace their cells as well. They "wear out" due to usage where the electrolysis process slowly damages them mostly by having their special coatings get degraded. The SWCG plates have special coatings (usually with ruthenium oxide as well as iridium over a titanium metal base) that make chlorine production more favorable than oxygen production at the salt levels used in pools. Without such coatings, you'd have to have a much higher chloride level to produce chlorine instead of oxygen gas. The electrolysis process produces heat and microscopic vibration stresses and these slowly wear out the plates both physically as well as forming metal corrosion oxides replacing or plating over the desired coating.

The lifespan is roughly proportional to the current density over time so using an oversized unit and running the SWCG with a lower on-time percentage will have it last longer. Most typical cells are designed with plates that last at least 10,000 hours (some claim 15,000 hours as shown in this link). So if you have an oversized unit where it has an on-time of 25% over an 8-hour circulation pump runtime, then that's 2 hours per day or 14 years lifespan. On the other hand, if you have an on-time of 75% over that 8-hours, you only get 4-1/2 years.

Thanks, Richard.

I agree with Chemgeek. The use of magnesium chloride is what can be used with SOME salt chlorine generators, but there are some manufactures that will not cover warranty if you do. Sulfates/sulfites are detrimental to salt cells.

Thanks, Sean

Wow! We get some really interesting questions here! I'd NEVER think to add Epsom Salts to my SWCG pool And I still won't!

If one uses magnesium chloride in place of some of the sodium chloride, one has to dose it properly. Magnesium has a double charge and is more conductive than sodium. The SWCG cells assume a certain level of conductivity and when they measure salt levels they are really measuring conductivity and translating into equivalent salt ppm (some cells do temperature compensation so report that salt level more accurately at different temperatures). The salt test measured chloride and reports this as ppm sodium chloride. In terms of equivalent conductivity, 3000 ppm sodium chloride is equivalent to ((50.11+76.34)/(106.12+76.34))*(95.211/58.44)*3000 = 3387 ppm magnesium chloride, but if you measure just chloride then you want to measure the equivalent of ((50.11+76.34)/(106.12+76.34))*3000 = 2079 ppm sodium chloride in that test. So it takes somewhat more magnesium chloride by weight to get the same conductivity (it's less quantity on a molar basis) so you target a lower chloride level so keep that in mind when calculating dosages if you still decide to do this.

Richard, that sounds like an interest theoretical model, but as PoolSean points out, you don't want to try it while your SWCG is under warranty.