Bubbles and Flakes

Ok I have two issues with my Aquarite SWG. First I have small bubbles coming from my return lines when my Aquarite is generating. I have heard this is normal but wanted to see if any of you have had the same issue.

The second and more irritating by far is that the Aquarite also seems to be producing little milky white flakes. Has anyone had this happen to them? The flakes are small and pretty much disolve or break up if you pick them out of the water. the problem is that there are sooo many of them. I love to have crystal clear water and it stinks to have all this stuff floating in my pool. Could it be the salt I used? It was the Mortons in the big yellow bags that they sell at Home Depot.

Any help is GREATLY appreciated.

by the way my pool is a 14,000 gal. inground pool with the 3M Colorquartz plaster.

I just sent an e-mail to Aquarite tech support to see what they had to say about the flakes.

The flakes are most likely calcium scale coming off the cell when it reverses polarity.
What is your pH? Odds are lowering the pH level will take care of the calcium scale. We would have to look at your total alkalinity and calcium hardness levels too, as these influence scale formation in the cell.

Bubbles are normal and can be minimized by adjusting your inlet oriface sizes. Use a smaller oriface on the closest return jet to influence the bubbles to the other return lines. What this will do is to balance out the bubbles returning to the pool so that they are not as apparent as them all coming out of the one return line.

Thanx for the reply, I'll post a complete water test when I get home. I do know my PH has been around 7.6 - 7.8 I TRY to keep it 7.6 or lower but with the swg it sure likes to stay pretty high. I got the following reply from the Aquarite tech support:

The Aqua Rite can't make the flakes but they may be forming from something in the chemistry reacting with the chlorine. I recommend getting a complete water chemistry analysis done then call our Technical Support Team from the pool so we can go over the results and look at the system's diagnostics.

Would the ps233 be considered a complete water chemistry analysis? As the Aquarite tech asked for?

Yes. Ben's test kit is fine for this purpose.
However, I do not agree with the techs analysis. The flakes can form on the cell. it's the very nature of salt cells to generate calcium scale. The reverse polarity's function is to dissolve the calcium back into solution before it has a chance to build up or flake off. If the reverse polarity is not working properly, or your water chemistry is considered "Scale forming" according to the Saturation Index, then you'll see scale. Typically, if the reverse polarity is not working properly, the cell will develope scale in about a week. The scale would be visible when looked into the end of the cell. Water chemistry related scale usually build up in 2 weeks or longer.

Hope this helps.

The last few weeks, I have had a similar problem. White flakes you can see best at night with the light on. I did not think it was the SWG because of the volume of water and density of the flakes. It seems like a SWG have to make a lot of flakes to be able to see it in a 14,000 gallon pool let alone a 21,000. But then again, I do have high calcium and it would seem like a reasonable explaination.

Oasisdave,

Do you have high calcium in your pool? That is my problem and I think it may contribute to the flakes.

Also, I have read in another post that it could just be particulates in the water. Summer time puts a lot stuff in the water and the chlorine bleaches it to white. Depending on the density of the particles, they will float, sink or stay mixed with the water. The later has a hard time getting filtered out.

If I could catch a few particles, it would be interesting to put under a microscope.

I have also noticed flakes in my pool, to me they look like bad dandruff. Some days I notice them and some I dont, all depends on how the sun is shining into the pool. Pool Store told me to shock with non-chlorine shock, didnt have much effect.

During the time that my cell was not switching polarity correctly the flakes were really bad, and also caked up my debris shield in the skimmer pretty bad. Since finding this site, getting a good test kit to check the chemistry, and getting my salt cell replaced I havent really noticed the flakes, the debris sheild is not caked with white powdery stuff either, and my cell is not scaling up either. The scale that had built up on the tile in the spa also seems to be cleaning itself up.

My CH is up over the 1000 mark right now and try to keep my PH below 7.8 to stay in a non-scaling condition.

Keep your CH close to 200 and your PH in the correct range and the flakes will disappear.
Greg

Quote:

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Originally Posted by guild1

Keep your CH close to 200 and your PH in the correct range and the flakes will disappear.
Greg

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Easy for you to say :rolleyes:. With fill water over 350 ppm hardness, it is very difficult to keep the pool below 400 ppm. The only thing I have to work with is alkalinity and PH and that does not seem to be enough.

Oh, sorry, I thought this was a thread about some of my old girlfriends :o - seriously, Sean, as per usual, has the right take on this.

Ok, heres my test results:
FC - 3
CC - 0
TC - 3
PH - 7.5
Alk - 110
Cal - 420 up from 370 on 7/6/06 but had the flakes then too.
Cya - 40
Temp - 87

I noticed today that the water looked just a little cloudy.

Right now my equipment runs from 6:00 Am to 2:00 Pm. The Aquarite is running at 70% and the salt readout on the control panel is 3200. I don't have the salt test from Ben so this is all I have to go by. Another strange thing I have noticed about the Aquarite is that if I up the generating time to say 80% the salt reading drops to 3100. If I lower the generating time that salt readout climbs. Anyone know why it does this?

Mas985 - The flakes I have sink to the bottom, they seem to collect in the shallow end below the return jets. They stay on the bottom until the water gets disturbed then scatter everywhere. I always seem to have the flakes no matter what season it is.

You might try raising the CYA up to the recommended levels of 60-80 to allow reduced output level. I run my AquaRite 8 hrs a day at 30% for 20k, full sun, CYA at 80. It won't eliminate the flakes but maybe reduce them enough that it's minimal.

OasisDave,

Have you removed the cell and inspected it for the same calcium flakes?

Last time I removed it was about a month ago to clean the cell. Didn't think to look for the flakes though. I will give that a try. As far as my water chemistry goes, did everything look pretty good to you?

Well, I got my Ph down to around 7.3 and for some reason that seems to have helped a little. I looked inside the cell and there seemed to be some flakes clinging to the plates inside. Next step for me is to call Aquarite tech support and see if they have any more suggestions. (maybe the unit isn't reversing polarity correctly?) There HAS to be something I can do to get rid of these things!

If lowering PH reduces the flakes, then it is probably the calcium being dissolved back into solution. So the the only long term solution is to reduce the calcium level in the pool.

Have you tested your fill water? If it has less calcium than the pool water, you can do a partial refill to lower it. Bleachcalc has a new refill function to help but you will probably need at least 50% new water.

In lew of a refill, keep your PH and alkalinity down toward the low end of the recommended ranges. This should help keep the calcium in solution.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by guild1

Keep your CH close to 200 and your PH in the correct range and the flakes will disappear.
Greg

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My water is 350 coming out of the city supply. Can't do much about that, sad as that is. I suppose I can truck water in......

this issue of white flakes has plague our system for four years. I will tell you what I have found to be the case in my sitation. My flaeks are BAD, by the way.

1. defintely has to do with CH, my start point is 350 and it is over 700 now after draining two years ago.
2. It only happens in summer (high chlorine output)
3. Ph lowering has not helped me, but I try to maintain it low at around 7.3-.4
4.The Corporate Aquarite guy came here a couple of years ago and basically blew me off as a pool chemistry issue that he can't help. Which I basically agree with, but he was a total jerk....I don't recall his name but I do recall he was Australian.
5. It also causes my filter to require cleaning more often, like once a month(cartridge).
6. I eventually learned not too mess with putting tons of product, clarifiers, etc in the pool. However, if there was something new developed, I would try it.

I realize this isn't solving the problem but, the only thing I have done that works is drain the pool. Also I try to clean the cell once a month, not sure this helps. It is so visible/bad in my spa that I think we have to drain again.

I also would appreciate any new found input/product.

karen in so cal