Salt Level Keeps High without Addition of Any Salt

[TooSalty]

I am new here and this is my first post.

I have high salt level this year. It keeps at about 4900 all this season without me adding any salt to it. The chlorine generator works fine, with 40% to 60% capacity running, I can manage 3 to 5 chlorine level.

My CYA level has been low. Now it's about 40. This means I am supposed to lose lots of chlorine therefore salt. But my salt level just doesn't come down. Sometimes it even goes up!

Anybody here had the same problem before and knows why?

Thanks!

BTW, the title of the thread this post goes to should be Chlorine Generators, not Salt Generators. The C in SWCG is for Chlorine.

[PoolDoc]

If you are in the dry, hot part of Texas, with kinda bad water even when it's not dry . . . yeah, you could see your 'salt' increasing as you replace evaporated water.

The reason is, SWCG's measure conductivity (how easily electricity passes through the water) not salt. This usually works OK, because conductivity increases when salt increases. The problem for you is ANY kind of salt (say, sodium sulfate) increases conductivity, but only chloride salts increase SWCG capacity.

It would probably be worthwhile to ask your water company for a copy of their most recent annual water analysis, and post the results here. (You don't need to include trace pesticides and radionuclides, etc., just ordinary anions & cations.)

Build up of certain salts can cause problems.

[waterbear]

I am new here and this is my first post.


My CYA level has been low. Now it's about 40. This means I am supposed to lose lots of chlorine therefore salt. But my salt level just doesn't come down. Sometimes it even goes up!

Losing chlorine does not cause you to lose salt. The ONLY way to lose salt is to replace water. Salt does not get 'used up' when you generate chlorine. since the chlorine formed becomes chloride again when it sanitizes. If you have a lot of evaporation the salt can actually go up. If the temperatures go up the salt seems to go up because conductivity increases and the SWCG does not actually measure salt, it measures conductivity. There are chemicals tests for salt (actually for chloride ions) but the results often do not match the readout of the generator because they are measuring different things.

[TooSalty]

"Losing chlorine does not cause you to lose salt"...

Well, when the electrolysis process separate sodium chloride (salt) into sodium ions and chlorine gas, if you don't contain the gas, it will evaporate into the air.

And once it's gone, you just don't have enough chlorine to combine with sodium ions to form salt again.

This is called the law of conservation of mass and don't try to challenge it.

[waterbear]

"Losing chlorine does not cause you to lose salt"...

Well, when the electrolysis process separate sodium chloride (salt) into sodium ions and chlorine gas, if you don't contain the gas, it will evaporate into the air.

And once it's gone, you just don't have enough chlorine to combine with sodium ions to form salt again.

This is called the law of conservation of mass and don't try to challenge it.

The point you are missing is that the chlorine generated forms hypochorous acid and hypochlorite ion and does not exist as chlorine gas so to speak. In fact, elemental chlorine cannot exist in water if the ph is above 7.0. Normal pool pH is higher than that and salt pools are usually at the high end of acceptable because of increased outgassing of CO2 because of aeration from hydrogen gas generation at the cathode. Outgassing of CO2 is the main cause of pH rise in salt pools (and any pool that uses unstabilized chlorine sources in fact, exclusive of new, curing plaster) and the rate of outgassing is directly influenced by the TA, which is why low TA is beneficial in a salt pool. Also, in a salt pool CYA also indirectly helps with pH control since higher CYA levels allow for lower cell output which means less aeration which means less outgassing of CO2. Emperical evidence indicates that maintaining the FC at 5% of the CYA seems to be optimum, btw.
Under practical conditions in a salt pool salt is lost by water replacement. Period.
Your understanding of the chemistry of a salt pool is a little off. The chlorine destroyed by sunlight does not gas off. Technically, we are discussing hypochlorous acid, hypochlorite ion, and chlorinated isocyanurates (when stabilizer is present) When these are destroyed by UV light they revert back to chloride ions and mass is preserved. CYA does NOTHING to contain chlorine gas and chlorine gas, per se, does not exist in the water. Even when a gas chlorinator tech treats a pool by bubbling chlorine gas into the water it forms (once again) hyoochloruous acid, hypochlorite ions, and chlorinated isocyanurates.

Any other questions?

Mods: since this is getting technical perhaps it should be moved to the China Shop.

[PoolDoc]

Hey Salty;

Did you want an answer, or do you wanna argue with us?

We do that, too . . . but as Waterbear notes, the "China Shop" is the place for those threads.

[TooSalty]

Hey, Doc;

Actually, I agree with your first reply since I do live in "the dry, hot part of Texas". And since we don't have much rain this year, I do use more tap water to fill the pool. So I agree with you this may be caused by false reading.

But your last posting confused me. Who is "we"? waterbear told me "The ONLY way to lose salt is to replace water" and if the replaced water still has "salt" as you told me, this won't help anything at all.

So you see, sometimes when you put "union opinion" on top of your own, you will lose your own.

I am looking for clarity here, not agreement.

[PoolDoc]

Hi Salty;

I deleted your post about the 100%, but have moved the thread here since you seem to be more interested in arguing than in our answers. But think before you jump back in: gloves come off in this section, and when you say something dumb . . . we don't dance around like we do in the rest of the forum; we just call it "dumb".

For example, are you prepared to argue that the 90 degree liquid in Watermom's pool is only 99.999% liquid and is still 0.001% ice, since a lot of it froze this winter? Would you really want to defend that implication?

Ben

[TooSalty]

If you don't have an answer, delete the question.

0.001% ice is dumb: ever heard fried ice cream? I don't think you ever did. Otherwise, you won't make this kind of stupid analogy.

[PoolDoc]

Suit yourself. I thought I was doing you a favor; I won't bother again.

If anyone feels like arguing with you, they are welcome to do so, so long as it stays here, and doesn't degenerate further into ad hominem attacks or crudity.

By the way, it's not necessary to requote posts immediately above your own -- most people will see them there without further notice.

Ben