Should Church Pools Convert To SWG?

I'm looking for help here. Our church has a 180K gal. IG pool which needed about $4K in chemicals this year. I converted my pool to SWG this year and love it! My money is no longer spent on chemicals and the water quality is outstanding. I talked about it so much that the church asked me to explore the feasibility of that size conversion. I called Polaris(they had no info on commercial applications), and Goldline. Goldline said we would need 8 SWG units,the warranty would only be 1 year, and cell lifespan would be only 12-18 months(with replacement cells listing @$605 each). Can any of you offer knowledge about this type of situation? Thank you:)

If he doesn't respond here, I would send a pm to PoolSean - he is the Commercial Product Sales Manager for Aqua Cal Inc. / AutoPilot Systems Inc. and might be able to help.

Sumo1, welcome to the forum!! Glad you've had success with your SWCG, IMO they are the way to go. However, I'm not too knowledgeable on the commercial applications, but someone here has vast experience with comercial pool care - it's Pooldoc (Ben), the guy who provided us with this site. I would ask him the question (please realize that he's probably very(!) busy right now - but this is a project for next spring).
What I would do is let this ? stay with the forum til ~ January and cull the responses, then send Ben a pm with the link to get his opinion of what's been said.
Again, welcome to the forum, it's the best place to get the info you need to care for any size pool!! - Waste.

Thanks Sean. Sumo1, to correctly size a commercial pool for a salt system, I need the following:
Pool Volume
Maximum Bather Load(throughout the whole day, and on the busiest day)
How many hours per day does your main filter pump run?
Indoor or Outdoor location?
Are there any water features,water falls, fountain heads, slides...and if so, how many hours per day are they in operation?
What is the peak water temperature?

We've recently done the Hepzibah Childrens Home in Macon (approx 90,000 gallons). You're more than welcome to contact them and ask about the Pool Pilot.

Whichever system you end up with, make sure you verify that they have NSF certification on their system. The Department of Health will require it. You will also have to consider which county you're in. I know Cobb, Gwynette and Dekalb all require permits to be applied for. The last two also require 1 lb of chlorine production per 10,000 gallons.

Regarding warranty, most salt manufacturers provide 1 year warranty. Some cell's last 12 - 18 months, which is basically their residential cell that has gotten commercial approval. Others provide a specific commercial cell, which will provide longer cell life and high chlorine output per day. Yet some others provide a 3 yr warranty, but work upon the principle of a single large cell and a large power supply. While this takes up a little less space, it means you have only one cell and if it fails, you have no chlorine output. A multiple cell installation allows redundancy so that if one cell fails, you have the others that will continue to manufacture chlorine to still provide chlorine to your pool. The multiple cell approach also allows lower cost of replacement when the time comes.

Hope this helps,