What Type Of Salt Water Chlorinator?

[zebrax0r]

Hi.

So, I need a new salt water pool chlorinator unfortunately. My old one bit the dust a few months ago. It was an ancient Zodiac Clearwater unit.

The pool is 35,000L, in-ground, pebble-crete.

Locale is Brisbane, Australia - so pretty warm/humid climate.

My local pool store is pushing the Astral Equilibrium EQ units onto me, with the full automation equipment for self dosing of chlorine and acid.

I have an Astral Viron DC brushless pump. It is pretty darn impressive.

I'm just finding it hard to come to terms with an almost $3k sink-hole. The automation alone (two probes!) are $1000. Kind of concerning.

The other local pool joint have given me the typical rhetoric:

"Nah, we won't even stock the Astral stuff. Bad news that automation equipment. Go with a stock standard big old transistor based chlorinator. It'll cause you less problems. You should get yourself a Noria ROK: X unit!"

And of course the primary pool shop are all like:

"Of course they'd say that...because...insert whatever excuse here".

Just looking for people's experiences with the Astral Equilibrium stuff. There seems to be absolutely no actual reviews of this equipment online. What of pool dosing automation? Good? Bad? Ugly? More trouble than it is worth, or is it robust these days?

Thanks.

z

[chem geek]

I can't comment on what is now currently being sold in Australia, but in the U.S. where 3000 ppm salt levels are typically used (in Australia it's more common to have 5000 ppm salt) the main brands are reasonably reliable and not too expensive. As shown in this thread, the cells now last roughly 10,000 hours if well maintained and systems cost less than $1000.

The issue you bring up is whether automation that also does acid dosing is required. Instead of that, why don't you just operate the pool in a way that minimizes the amount of acid needed in the first place? See Water Balance for SWGs where a higher Cyanuric Acid (CYA aka stabilizer or conditioner) level of 80 ppm should let you cut down your % on-time while a lower Total Alkalinity (TA) no higher than 70 ppm and a higher pH target of around 7.8 should reduce carbon dioxide outgassing which causes pH to rise. Finally, you can optionally use 50 ppm Borates (usually from boric acid though it can also be added from borax and acid) as a pH buffer to make any acid additions less frequent.