my neighbor has the aquasmarte thing..he swears by it. your chlorine SHOULD be low with it, that's the whole point of having that particular system anyway. it uses copper ions to sanitize the water instead of chlorine. my neighbor didn't mention anything about the bac pacs or whatever, he says they only replace the copper things once every other year or so. they add a little bleach every week, because even with that you need SOME chlorine. you might want to contact another aquasmart dealer and play dumb to see if you get the same answers that your guy is telling you.