Does anyone use a salt system for their swimming pool?
If so, can you compare it to a chlorine method? How is maintenance? Most importantly, is it more or less accomodating to someone who is less than perfect at maintenance?
My brother has such a system in his pool. It’s MUCH less maintenance-intensive once the system gets going. There’s very little active maintenance involved other than sweeping out leaves and debris - you only have to think about replenishing the system… I think it’s less than once a year. And no harsh chlorine to go up your nose and make you sneeze - although the water does taste salty.
One last call for input?
I have one. This is the first year we’ve used it and overall we’ve been very pleased. It keeps the pool sparkling clean with very little effort.
A couple of criticisms: It took a while to get started and I ended up having to shock the hell out of the pool when I was opening it. Once I got a chemical balance started, the system seems to maintain it very well.
Second, the manual says that you will not have to replenish the salt. This has not been our experience. I started up with about 15 bags of salt and have put in about 6 or 7 more over the course of the summer. Which is fine. Even if the salt system weren’t cheaper than regular chlorine (it is), it’s much easier and far more effective.
Oh, one more criticism. My system does seem to restrict my pump flow somewhat. This makes the skimmer a little less effective. Also, if I want to vacuum I sometime reconnect the hoses so the pump return goes directly to the pool instead of through the chlorinator. However, I don’t need to vacuum nearly as often.
A question; years ago, i heard about a pool system that used copper sulphate instead of chlorine. It was supposed to work great-but I’ve never heard anymore about this. anybody know more?