oversiging cell for longer life?

[Poolsean]

Hello Brock,

I'm one to always recommend getting the largest size cell you can afford. In your case, an indoor pool does not consume as much chlorine as an outdoor pool. In either case, the Pool Pilot has some programmability to accomodate the overchlorination conditions that has already been mentioned in previous posts. In other words, you can program the Digital to only generate chlorine for a preprogrammed number of hours per day, if so desired.

Your question regarding whether the cell cycles on/off throughout the day, always on (variable power to the cell), activated for a specific amount of time, or always fully on would depend on the manufacturer of the system you are considering. This will affect the way your pump run time is operated, or not...again, depending on the system you select.

What has been already pointed out is that you do not have a UV degradation issue with your indoor pool, so any chlorine generated will be consumed by your family using the pool. Every other day is probably more than normal so I'd say that you will get a pretty good consumption of chlorine. Is your pool heated as well? That too will consume some chlorine.

From past experience, an indoor pool with very little usage tends to result in overchlorination, due to the chlorine not being consumed and the salt chlorinator generating every day. You asked about if the system was capable of "sense the CL and adjust". This gets to ORP technology...which I am fortunate to be the only salt generator company that offers this as a Total Control system for residential pools. However, you can get an ORP controller as a separate component and add it on with just about any salt system you select. By using the ORP controlled system, it would not matter on cell size, bather loads, chlorine demands, etc...the system will generate chlorine only when needed, otherwise the cell will be in the rest mode (off).

I noticed that you mentioned that you add "BAY WATER WITH ALGAE AND OTHER FUN LIVING SMALL THINGS"....gulp...um.... please explain.

You mention that currently you add one gallon every other week. One pound of chlorine generated by a salt system is equal to one gallon of 12% bleach. This means that your chlorine demand would be about 1/2 lb per week. This is very low chlorine demand.
Your salt system would not have to generate too much chlorine. So basically, the advice given about utilizing the smallest cell and still getting excellent cell life is correct. I would love for you to reap the benefits of longer warranty and cell life by going to a large cell. You can still do this without concern with the Pool Pilot (as I mentioned that we can program the unit for lower chlorine outputs). I cannot speak for the other manufacturers.
The call is up to you.

Hope this helps,

[Brock]

Waste great advice, we do run the pump for a minimum of 4 (typically I just spin it up to 12 hours) hours after anyone has been swimming. I added a spring wind timer that overrides the compool setting and we run it every time. I also run the pump in low speed for 15 hours a day, maybe overkill but I feel better and with the two speed pump in low speed it isn’t bad electricity wise.

Sean yes our pool is heated, to much I think, but my wife won’t go in it otherwise, so it is about 88F.

Yes we top off our pool with water from the bay of Green Bay an inlet off Lake Michigan. Our well water is about 1800 ppm TDS, very hard and has a lot of metals in it. The bay is about 50 ppm TDS and is quite soft, but being a large body of water has its share of algae and other small living things. We do filter it though four 5 micron filters before it hits the pool and shock the heck out of it when I add any significant amount. I have been refilling the pool every other year and this is a refill year. I would get the water cleaned up and balanced before I ever installed or turned on a salt system.

And yes this helps a lot, my understanding of how this all work is much better.