What type of pool? Salt or Chlorine, the good, the bad, the ugly...

[Phnom Penh Trader]

On 3/2/2014 at 5:41 PM, SantiSuk said:

I initially operated my pool as a chlorine-dosed pool then for the last 6 months as a salt converted chlorine pool (same as what people are calling a salt water pool).

The most important decision is your preference for the water. I notice at least one poster alluding to the fact that you will not notice the salt. I could not disagree more! I noticed it straight away and I did not like the salty taste (or even the extra buoyancy it gives - though that is marginal). My Thai family and friends have all commented "Chem" (salty). I'm sort of used to it now, but if they continue to complain about it this summer then I'll go back to chlorine.

I would change back to chlorine dosing in a flash anyway, were it not for the convenience of salt. Salt dosing requires far less frequent treatment (say once or twice a month, not twice a week). I also think that salt water chlorination produces cleaner pool walls, but that may just be the fact that the dose is kept constant wheres manually added chlorine every few days produces variable chlorination.

Some people do not like handling chlorine. Personally I find it ok to deal with. I also find that a largish pool takes one to two sacks of salt a month to keep the concentration up. Lugging sacks around is more arduous than dipping into a large tub of chlorine that you buy and lug home say once every 18 months. Storing say 10 to 20 sacks requires storage space. Salt costs of 150 to 400 baht of salt a month is more expensive than the basic manual chlorine requirement. Initial dosing of a large pool costs say 2,000 baht (plus or minus 1,000 baht, depending on how cheap is your source and whether you find as I did that the initial dosing takes 50% more salt than pool website guidance).

Salt pools also require a few hundred baht a year of cyanauric acid to be added My chlorine costs were 5,000 baht for 18 months supply and the cyanauric is already added. However cyanauric in chlorine-dosed pools builds up such that you may find yourself paying an equivalent amount to dilute the pool water down to recommended levels every year or two; cost of added water is unlikely to be too different from cost of dosing a salt pool with cyanauric and neither is a major cost consideration anyway.

Other costs - you will need to measure chlorine levels in both systems, but salt chlorination gives you confidence in constant chlorine levels, So less chlorine testing strips are needed for a salt-chlorinated pool, but that is offset by the requirement to test salt levels, for which a 2,500 baht salt digital meter is the best bet (salt strips are rubbish, go off too quickly IMO and are pretty dear anyway). In summary, chemical testing costs are unlikely to be a deciding factor

Anyone who wants to do pools as cheaply as possible should not feel that they are short-changing themselves by going the manually added chlorine route. Personally, having already paid for the chlorinator I would prefer to stick with it because it allows me to go away for a couple of weeks leaving my BIL to vacuum the pool and do little else. Previously he was very unreliable in dosing the pool with chlorine and occasionally I would come back to greening walls that required a couple of hours of diving/brushing. As things stand, when the chlorine cell goes I shall look at installing an automatic liquid chlorine feeder instead! I don't like having to lug bags of salt from the local trader and hump them around my pool, but equally others don't like handling chlorine and you can always pay to have a deliverer or pool boy take care of the weighty salt bags.

Ask on here whether there is anyone close to you (ie your location?) who can give you experience of one or both styles. It really is fundamental to your decision.

Edit: A pool the size you are talking is unlikely to need more than say half a bag of salt a month so maybe the bag-lugging stuff in my post is a bit pveregged. "It is a closed system that requires no top-up" is ... well a myth. Also, having used sand filtration with no issues for 3 years personally I would not bother paying the substantial extra for upmarket/upcost options.

You know that ‘Chem/Kem’ means Stingy in Thai they might just be talking about you? ????

[Saanim]

23 hours ago, Phnom Penh Trader said:

I was wondering if anyone was going to mention them,especially with the wildlife it’ll attract like dragonflies etc. in Thailand a natural swimming pool HAS to be the way to go?

In fact, it was mentioned 8 years ago ????.

The idea is surely good, however, how it really works? It obviously needs to be situated on a very large lot and have it get balanced for few years.

Will it look also so nice after the kids play there (as the promotion pictures show) and whirl up the ground?

And it might better function in rather cooler countries than in tropes. But how many days the swimming is enjoyed in cooler countries?

 The promotion mentions that it's not much more expensive than the conventional ones. So, what's "natural" in it if it needs also an equipment?