Pros and Cons of a Saltwater System

[KurtV]

Some of the oft touted benefits of an SWG don't actually have anything to do with the SWG but accrue instead from having salty water. Those include the "feel" of the water, and the lack of eye sting. If that's all you want from an SWG you can just put salt in the water.

There's a long thread here with several posts about stone corrosion caused by salt water. It seems to be a regional issue (if it's an issue at all) and may be related to rainfall. One theory is that frequent rainfall in places like Florida and the Gulf south keep the stonework rinsed off. If that theory's right and you live in an arid or semi-arid area, you can get the same result by regularly rinsing off the stonework.

SWGs will tend to drive your pH up. In some pools, owners see no net pH rise at all as the upward pressure caused by the SWG is offset by some other variable.

SWGs have a high initial cost and are a more expensive chlorine source than bleach or tri-chlor. This thread has a good cost analysis. I figure that between initial cost, costs for additional acid, electricity costs for running the SWG, and the cost of periodic cell replacement, an SWG would cost me about $10/month more than chlorinating with bleach.

You may or may not have to shock an SWG-equipped pool. You may if you have a very heavy bather load or if a bunch of organics (e.g. leaves or pollen) get into your water and overwhelm the chlorine your SWG produced. You may if you lose power for a day or two and thus don't produce any chlorine. Ditto if your SWG has a failure. In other words, you may have to shock an SWG-equipped pool for the same reasons you have to shock a bleach chlorinated pool. There is probably less chance of having to shock with an SWG but as many poolforum devotees will attest, a pool cared for in the way advocated here will rarely if ever need shocking either (I haven't ever shocked thist pool in the almost two years I've had it).

The benefit of an SWG is that you have an extremely convenient method of getting chlorine into your pool.