"A pool store told me that unless I have a CYA reading over 85 my generator will not be able to produce any chlorine." -- totally bogus.


"I checked out the water hardness and found out it was over 12000 ppm" -- also bogus- was that a typo?

Reading through your post, it's not clear that you've cleaned the cell since you had high calcium (not: 12,000 ppm, but presumably still too high). If you haven't, I would recommend cleaning the cell, per the manual, just to rule that out as an issue.

PoolDoc