Hi guys. Thought I would chime in here. I too was looking for a good solution to chlorination. I have a MasterSpa LSX, and I love it. I had a hip replacement and this spa is perfect. It has a different seat for each area or the body. Anyway, it requires chlorine and I hated adding it daily. My first week of ownership, I forgot a dose or two and my son and his girlfriend got a Staph skin infection...bad! So I moved to a floating tri-chlor method, which works great despite what other say, as long as you adjust your release perfectly and watch the pH carefully. I did this by using a permanent marker and marking on the floater the chlorine level at each small turn of the opening control. Bad new was that if you don't adjust your pH every few days, the acid from the tri-chlor increases and destroys your pillow and starts to work on the seals. That's where I read about salt chlorination. Did not want to spend a fortune on built in one, and was not sure if it would void my warranty so I had the choice of Spa-pilot, which require the constant addition of chlorine according to its manufacture! or a riskier move by going with the Colorchlor by a relatively unknown company. Well I selected Colorchor since it claimed no additional chorine was necessary. The review follows after two weeks of use.
Colorchlor Review:
1. Customer service 5/5 Fast delivery. Discounted web price. Free Shipping.
2. Ease of use 4.5/5 The directions are well written, but they engineered this product so well that you need to
read them carefully to understand how you can do so many things without a single button.
3. Engineering 5/5 This company is amazing. They thought of everything for example.
A. Reversed polarity to avoid calcium buildup on the electrodes
B. Automatic increase in chlorination after use. You do this by lifting the colorchlor out of the
water when you get in. When you lift it out, it lets you chose from 10 different light shows
which last for ten minutes after which it kicks up you chlorine output 2 notches for the next
four chlorination cycles.
C. Automatic temperature and salt detection.
The only thing missing is automatic chlorine detection, and if that were available, I'm sure they would have included it.
4. Function 5/5 Started working immediately and chlorine levels were detectible within 1 hour. Chlorine levels
were actually too high the next morning, so I decrease the chlorine output cycle a couple time
until they were perfect. They have remained there for two weeks so far.
Concluding remarks. I am a scientist and not affiliated with this company in any way. I wrote this review because I love the product so far and I love good engineering (You find so few examples of good engineering anymore!).
As for your original question. I have had no problems with the salt. You can barely detect its existence. I do not have metal on my spa, but if you do I would suggest adding zinc balls in the filter area to prevent corrosion. (This is how car and boat manufactures prevent corrosion). I have a stone patio surrounding my hot tub, and have not seen any salt marks whatsoever. None of my son's friends even noticed that I changed to salt water. The salt actually has a smooth feeling to it. Finally, I use latex bands to stretch my hips in the spa, and I noticed that these no longer stick to themselves when they are dry like they did before the salt.
The only small downside is that it does require a GFI circuit that if it trips will shut down your chlorination. This happened to me once during a rainstorm, so I need to relocate the outside box.
Hope this helps and happy hottubing!
