How To Choose The Right Size Salt Water Generator..Cell
by Don
My pool is a straight backed Kidney shape 20 width x 18 width x 36 length the deep end is 8ft in the 18 width and the shallow end is 3.5 in the 20 width. My pool installer set me up with the Hayward aqua rite salt chlorination system, with a turbo cell-9 for pools up to 25000 gallons. I am calculating my pool to be 26548 gallons 1548 gallons more than the turbo cell is rated for. Is this ok or should I ask for the bigger rated cell for pools up to 40000 gallons Thank you This is a great question Don One size does not fit all for salt water generators. They use both high voltage and high amperage outputs. It's important when you're choosing a salt chlorinator/generator to have a larger unit for your pool. A salt generator/chlorinator that is larger can be dialed back to run for less time each day, making the cell last longer. A salt cell that is too small might mean pool algae problems or green water later on if you don't run it for longer periods each day or add extra chlorine on a regular basis. It will strain to keep up on the chlorine demand. An example is a Corvette is meant to cruise at 120MPH. You can run a VW Beetle up to 120MPH but it will be straining. It's better to have a Corvette. Pool Chlorine Generator There are two things that are very important concerning a salt pool, each of them are equally important. They are: Salinity level Calcium hardness level Be sure you get a salt meter and test the pool weekly. The one I use at the YMCA for our salt pool is a Myron Analog Salinity Meter. We get ours from TMI Salt Pure. A picture can be found on this page: Salt Water Swimming Pools Don't simply rely on your salt chlorinator to give you an accurate salinity reading. It needs to be tested against a manual reading so you know that you'll have the correct amount of salt for your system to run properly. I know a place that had a salt pool but they didn't manually test the water salinity. They relied on simply pushing a button on the chlorinator to give them the salt reading. Long story short, the salt cell burned up. You need to calibrate the salt meter monthly. TMI has salinity solution that is already at 3000ppm salinity. They can tell you the proper way to calibrate the salt meter. Be sure to keep your calcium hardness is check. If it's too high the cell will develop calcium deposits on the inside which will shorten the life of the cell. I keep the Y pool between 150ppm - 250ppm calcium hardness and it works very well. Normally, the high amperage output of the cell might add between 500 to 1000 watts per day, or 1.0 KW to 1.5 KW, to your monthly electric bill. At 11 cents per watt, this will equate to between $5 to $11 every month. The short of it is this: Get an over-sized salt chlorine generator and dial it back. Hope this helps Robert |
