Do I Need Chlorine Tabs Even If I Have A Salt Water Pool?by Effie
Is that necessary because I thought converting to a salt converter means we do not use chlorine tablets anymore. It still burns our eyes. Thanks for the question Effie First you need to tell the pool person to stop putting chlorine tabs in the skimmer and get a tab floater. When the pump turns off the tabs keep dissolving. Then the pump turns back on the system gets a huge blast of acidic water. It can ruin the gaskets and seals pretty quickly. A tab floater is around $10. There are tabs that allegedly stop dissolving when the pump turns off so it's safe to put in a skimmer, but better safe than sorry. You do need stabilizer (cyanuric acid/CYA) when you have an outdoor pool regardless of whether it's a normal chlorine or salt water pool. The chlorine tabs should be Trichlor, which means they have the CYA already in them to keep a constant flow of chlorine and CYA. Chlorine Tablets Pool Chlorine Tablets A salt pool is not a chlorine free pool. You probably have a salt cell that produces chlorine for you. All this means is that you don't need to manually add chlorine to the pool, but the salt water generator still produces hypochlorous acid, which is chlorine. Salt Water Swimming Pools Chlorine Generator For every 10ppm of chlorine added with Trichlor tabs you'll raise the CYA by 6ppm so tell the maintenance person to test the CYA. Keep it between 30 - 50ppm and the chlorine between 1.5 - 3.5ppm. The only way to reduce CYA is to do a partial drain and refill. Burning eyes could be the result of an improperly balanced pool. If you could get me your chemical readings I can look them over and let you know if there's anything that needs to be adjusted. Take a sample of pool water to your local pool store for analysis then email me the results. Chlorine, CYA (cyanuric acid/stabilizer), pH, Alkalinity, Calcium Hardness, and Metals (iron and copper). Hope this helps and have a great rest of the Summer. Robert |
