I think I messed up by adding too much Permasalt

Hello from Kansas. We bought a 24' round above ground pool last summer from Family Leisure. I drained most of the pool and refilled it to open it up for this season. Based on the 40 pound bag of salt I had left over from the install, I added 5 of the recommended 11 bags before researching how to know when I had enough. That's when I learned that my Perma Salt system is NOT a chlorine generator like I believed it to be. Needless to say I won't be adding any more salt but the question is what to do now? I put 200 pounds of salt over a period of three days into a 12000 gallon pool and don't know how harmful this might be. Should I drain the pool and start over?

OK, Permasalt is a much-hyped pool treatment method that uses copper sulfate (copper salt!), plus borax (boron salts), plus chlorine (periodically), plus who knows what.

The website makes a number of claims that skirt the truth, or that are highly misleading. For example, "The System Chamber disperses natural minerals into the water such as copper and silver, that serve as natural algaecides.". Uh, no. There's nothing more 'natural' about copper sulfate than chlorine. And in any case, chlorine is used periodically.

However, some people use the Permasalt system are happy with it. It probably IS effective at controlling algae, and sanitation (killing germs) is less of an issue for home pools, since family members ALREADY have each other's 'germs'.

Other than expense, the downsides are typically staining and green hair . . . and if you didn't have those last year, you probably won't this year, either.

So . . . drain and refill?

What does it cost to refill your pool? If it's less than $100, I'd probably do that, just because it will make things simpler. But the Permasalt stuff will not hurt swimmers, and will be gradually removed by chlorination.

If you can send me some hi-resolution pictures -- fine print must be readable -- (poolforum@gmail.com) of the salt bags, I may be able to find exactly what's in the bags.

Using the 60% polyquat algaecide, which has no bad side effects, and which is compatible with salt and chlorine, will help you 'keep' your pool, if it takes you a few days to decide:

• Proteam Polyquat 60
• In the Swim Polyquat 60
• Kem-Tek Polyquat 60

I haven't found any acceptable algaecides being sold this year (2018) by Lowes, Home Depot, Walmart or Ace Hardware, so I put links to three on Amazon. You can pick between the cheapest and the fastest to ship. With Amazon Prime, you can have one of them in 2 days.

I assume that you realize that to do your chemistry correctly, you need a decent testkit? You can start with an HTH 6-way from Amazon -- but they are also available from some Walmart stores! These are rebranded Taylor Testkits and are a good buy.

Later, you'll need a K2006 from Amazon, but hang on to the Taylor OTO/phenol kit in the HTH kit -- it's preferable for daily testing.

Let me know how it goes.

More complete information on Permasalt at http://pool9.net/permasalt/

Thank you Doc but let me clarify my question as the title was supposed to read "I added too much salt to my Perma Salt system. I didn't add too much permasalt, that was a typo. With the Perma Salt system I was supposed to add in their start up product. I instead added five 40 pound bags of Morton Pool Salt which was about four bags too many if I'm going to follow up with their stuff. So instead of 40 pounds of salt, I added 200. Is that going to create a problem? The liner is vinyl and the sand filter is plastic so I don't know if corrosion would be an issue unless it corrodes the copper and silver elements. Oh, and the pool size is a little over 15,000 gallons, not 12,000. I was frustrated with myself when I first posted. Should I dilute or will this be okay?

The salt won't be a problem.

But . . . you should remove either the entire Permasalt ionizer OR the copper bars inside.