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Live in Mn and we have a fair amount of rain, I am having problems keeping my salt levels up to where they should be. It seems worse this year than past rainy years?
Anyone have any info? Is there something I am doing wrong? Just added 80# today, after adding 80 last week.
Or is this just typicall? I know salt doesnt evaporate.
Are you really loosing that much water due to overflow, or is the rainwater not mixed well with the pools water and therefore indicating low salt on your system? 160lbs sounds like a lot, but not sure how large your pool is, your pre-rain concentration, system level needed to operate, etc.
Just some thoughts, I'll let the experts chime in.
Michael
Is your CYA dropping also? It should be. If you are losing salt and CYA fast there are several things that could be going on.
First thing I would do is check for leaks if your salt and CYA is dropping much faster than it has in the past. Have you had to put in water more often then normal (The heavy rains you reported could be masking this.) A bucket test might be in order.
What kind of filter do you have? Filters that are backwashed will remove salt and CYA from the pool with every backwash. If you have such a filter are you backwashing more often?
Does your pool have an autofill device and and overflow drain. If the autofill is not shutting off then water can be going into the pool and draining out constantly. This would also lower salt and CYA levels.
How big is your pool?
It wold be very helpful if you would post info about your pool and equipment so we can get a grasp on what might be going on.
If you have a small pool then 80 lbs of salt is a lot but if your pool is 20k gallons or bigger it's not. In fact in a 20K pool 80 lbs of salt will only raise the salt by less than 500 ppm! (about 480). This is less than the precision that some SWG units can report salt levels!
Give us a bit more info and we will see what we can come up with.
More info would be helpful, we have not had to drain the pool of extra water, no auto water feed. I asked my wife if shee thinks it is loosing water and she said no. Cartridge filter.
It is a 26,000 g pool. New liner 2 years ago(ouch:( ) She tested the CYA and said it is at zero ppm according to her, she does the chemicals, i do the maintenence.
Yep the salt thing has me baffled, the SWG appears to be in working order, it got cleaned this spring and just recently checked it again. Can they become scaled enough to cause the salt readings to skew?
She also said the other chemicals where ok
Why don't you post all the levels of all the tests? Sometimes we see something that tells us more. "OK" is pretty vague.
I'm not the expert on SWGs. Waterbear and PoolSean know far more. But I do know that you must run higher CYA levels with SWGs. If CYA is zero, you are going to have troubles. I believe the recommended level is 70-80ppm for CYA.
Have you been losing CYA or just never had any? This is important.
I will have her get me the results and post em
OK, you are losing salt and CYA (since I assume you did have the recommended amount in the water). If you do not have an automaitc overflow drain I would start looking for leaks.
What makes you think you are loosing salt? 0 CYA does not mean 0 salt. If you are going by what your unit is saying the salt is, stop, and take a sample to your pool store to get it tested with a meter, not test strips. There is a chance that the unit is giving you the wrong salt reading, thereby telling you you need more salt when actually, you're putting in (way) too much.
Salt test strips (Acucheck) tend to be accurate within +/- 300ppm...it could be the SWG unit, but if CYA is declining, then salt is too. Like salt, CYA does not evaporate. It can vanish (another topic...can convert to ammonia) in the offseason, but if the pool is properly maintained during the swim season CYA comes down with dillution, as does salt.
Moreyes, a scaled cell can cause the salt reading to read lower than it actually is. Remove and inspect the cell blades to ensure there is no calcium hardness build up between the blades in the cell.
How are you determining the salinity level?