My wife and I built a new home last summer and our new pool went in in the fall, towards the end of our construction. I just opened the pool a couple of weeks ago and have spent that time cleaning and getting everything ready. I finally have the pool looking pretty good and have started working on the water chemistry. I gave the pool an initial opening shock and checked the salt level for the initial salt dosing of the pool. My pool is 18'x36' rectangular with a 3' shallow end and an 8' deep end. I did a rough calculation and came up with 26,730 gallons. Since the pool was filled with local water company water, I sort of figured I would be starting from zero and, according to the chart, I figured I'd need about 18 bags of salt.

OK, here's where my potential problem comes in. When I first fired up the chlorine generator, I looked at the salt reading. It showed 2800. I guess I didn't really expect it to read zero, but I certainly never expected it to read 2800. I thought that maybe the unit has a lower limit that it displays or maybe that it couldn't read below a certain level. I've added 4 bags of salt or 160 pounds every other day for the past week. I now have 16 bags or 640 pounds of salt in my pool and the salt display have never changed at any point from 2800. The instant salinity that is supposed to show me the salt level of my pool at any given moment, rather than an average, but it shows -0. Maybe I'm mistaken on what the regular display of 2800 is telling me but I know the instant salinity shows -0 and I don't think that is right for a pool that has 640 pounds of salt in it.

I have no idea what else I am supposed to do with this thing. I'm setup for the correct cell. I've had pools for years but this is my first chlorine generator. Maybe I'm looking at something wrong or have just made some bone headed mistake, but I'm really confused and don't know what else to try.

Any advice or ideas?

Thanks.

- Byron