Salt Level Keeps High without Addition of Any Salt

[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

[waterbear]

Run Forrest run!