Salt water pool conversion

Chlorine versus salt, the honest version

The biggest misunderstanding about salt pools is that they're chlorine free. They aren't. A salt cell runs a low electric current through mildly salty water and turns the salt into chlorine right in the plumbing. The water feels softer, the chlorine level stays steadier, and you stop hauling jugs and tablets. That's the upside, and it's a real one.

The tradeoffs are real too. The cell is a wear part that needs cleaning and eventual replacement. Salt is hard on some stone coping and on older metal fixtures. And a salt pool still needs pH and alkalinity managed, because the cell pushes pH up over time. A traditional chlorine pool costs less to set up and keeps going with a simpler equipment pad. Neither one is wrong. It depends on how you use the pool and what's around it.

• Softer feel on skin and eyes, steadier chlorine level
• No more buying and storing chlorine
• Salt cell needs cleaning and replacement over its life
• pH runs high on salt pools and still needs balancing
• Check your coping and fixtures before converting

What a conversion involves

If salt is the right call, the conversion is a day on the equipment pad. We plumb the cell into the return line after the filter and heater, mount the control box, and wire it in. Then we add pool grade salt to the water, wait for it to dissolve, and dial the cell's output to your pool size.

Before any of that we test the water. High stabilizer or bad calcium going in makes a salt pool miserable from day one, so we correct it first. We'll also look at your existing equipment, because a salt cell on a pump that's about to fail is a short lived upgrade.