White residue on salt water chlorinator cell

[BigTallGuy]

Hi and welcome to the Forum. You are indeed seeing calcium build up. I agree that cleaning your Salt Cell every day is nonsense. What is the make and model of your SWCG? In any case, Muriatic acid works very well to clean the calcium off of your Cell. I usually mix about a cup of Muriatic Acid to a gallon of water and let the cell soak in a plastic bucket. I would not submurge the electrical contact points, only the plates where the build-up is. It should bubble quite a bit, but after the bubbling stops, there should only be a few small spots left that you can scrape off with a plastic or wooden tool, then rinse. Some cells are self cleaning, at least to a point, and all cells will build up with calcium, some sooner than others. Even if your cell is not of the self cleaning variety, you do not need to clean it daily, probably not even weekly. Your cell, if it is rated big enough for your pool, should be able to keep up with your chlorine demand even with some calcium build up.

[cdysthe]

Hi and welcome to the Forum. You are indeed seeing calcium build up. I agree that cleaning your Salt Cell every day is nonsense. What is the make and model of your SWCG? In any case, Muriatic acid works very well to clean the calcium off of your Cell. I usually mix about a cup of Muriatic Acid to a gallon of water and let the cell soak in a plastic bucket. I would not submerge the electrical contact points, only the plates where the build-up is. It should bubble quite a bit, but after the bubbling stops, there should only be a few small spots left that you can scrape off with a plastic or wooden tool, then rinse. Some cells are self cleaning, at least to a point, and all cells will build up with calcium, some sooner than others. Even if your cell is not of the self cleaning variety, you do not need to clean it daily, probably not even weekly. Your cell, if it is rated big enough for your pool, should be able to keep up with your chlorine demand even with some calcium build up.

Thank you. I've got at Hayward Aquarite 25k Gallon Turbo Cell. I do not think I can leave the cell for as long as you suggest with the current water. It's simply too much build-up. As I said in another response in this thread the water here is very hard, nothing I can do about that. I've seen some products which claims to "protect" the salt cell and "prevent" or "limit" buildup. Would it be worth the cost trying on of those? I will also try to clean the cell with diluted muriatic acid instead of vinegar. Thank you for that advice.