Saline vs. Chlorine
 

Which is better? I hear a lot of negatives on chlorine, is salt water the new thing?

From what I'm reading, salt water pools are a cool, new approach to chlorinating the pools. With this being said, everyone in Southern California is ripping them out because of the high costs of power. You see, the salt only produces chlorine when the equipment is running. My pool costs me about ~$50 per month just to power up for the necessary 4-5 hours a day. By installing a salt system, it would need to run for 10 hours a day, costing well over $100 a month just to have it chlorinated properly. Sure, I could add some chlorine, but that is what I'm doing now, so IMHO it is a waste of money.

My son has a salt system and it is so complicated, he also has to hire a weekly tech to service it, at an additional $85 per month. He will gladly trade his with a chlorine system, if you know anyone interested!

Every pool place I asked sell the salt but when asked do not recommend it because of the corrosion caused by the salt on decks, chairs and tables etc.

I have a chlorine generator. I add rock salt to the pool until the saline level reaches between 2700 - 3400 ppm. The generator is a flow through device which does it's magic turning salt into chlorine temporarily. The water is slightly salty to the taste, but is so nice to the skin compared to the harshness of chlorine. Opening your eyes isn't a problem either in the water.

I don't know what it cost's to operate this gadget, but I think it's much cheaper than the $100.00 plus a year to buy the 3" tablets that I used to use.

The only maintenance is adding salt when the water evaporates making me add more fresh water and when it rains a lot over flowing the salt water onto the deck.

As far as the water getting on the deck and rusting things, the chlorine was pretty good at eating metal too, so I don't see how this could be any more of a problem with salt.

I love my system and would never go back to chlorine.

Just my :2cents:

One other consideration which I forgot to add is the fact that the salt cell will need to be replaced every 10,000 hours, which equates to every 3-5 years, and cost in excess of $600-$900.

Your correct about that! Mine went out in 2.5 years. Luckily to my surprise, it had a three year warranty. I'm also in the business, and one of my reps from a local supply company offered it to me for cost. The whole thing only cost me around $350.00. The replacement cell was more than that if it hadn't been under warranty. But I'm going on 5 years now and it still hasn't cost me anything but the original investment. I know when this cell goes, I will have to bite the bullet, but I like the system so much, I will stay with it.

Yup agree with you dude, it needs to be changed in 3-5 years time period and that's going to be really costly...

Before switching over to the chlorine generator I used the three inch pucks (trichloro bla bla bla) and I went through about 100 lbs a year. That adds up pretty fast as one bucket cost in the neighborhood of $100.00, so 3.5 times $100.00 is a new cell. Not to mention that the feeders don't last forever either. Chlorine is pretty tough on plastic over a period of several years.