Rain, rain, go away

Well, we've been in a holding pattern for the last week. The prep work is 100% complete, but it has rained every day for the last 7 days straight. Sometimes it's just a light shower, sometimes buckets. We've had about 7-8" of rain over the last week, and of course even a little shower wets the concrete and we have to start the drying process over again. They're still forecasting rain through Wednesday, so it will probably be next weekend at the earliest before the concrete is dry enough to proceed with the Ultraguard.

In the meantime, I've been working on some of the pool equipment so that everything will be ready to go once we fill the pool back up. Over the next few days (weather permitting) I will be making the following changes to our pool equipment:

1) Adding a saltwater system for easier maintenance
2) Removing the old chlorine tablet feeder
3) Adding a 2-speed pump timer in place of the manual pump speed switch

The saltwater chlorinator is an Ecomatic ESC-36 system. I had narrowed it down to this unit or the Aquarite, which seems to be a really popular unit with the pool builders around here. Either of these units are rated up to 40,000 gallons - the more the better (you want an oversized unit so it will run less often, extending the life of the cell). The popularity of the Aquarite might mean having an easier time finding replacement parts when needed, but overall the Ecomatic seemed like a better unit. The cell on the Ecomatic is supposed to have one of the longest lifespans, and I like the fact that the cell is clear and you can actually see when it is generating chlorine. Installation of these units is pretty straightforward, so this is one area where even a marginally handy DIYer can save some money. Pool builders typically charge about $1000-1200 for one of these systems. I found a new Ecomatic unit on EBay for $600, so that's a nice savings by doing it myself.

One thing about saltwater generators - don't fall for the myth that they will save you money. By the time you factor in salt, replacing the cell every 4-5 years ($400) and the electricity to run the system, you're spending about as much as you would on chlorine over that time period. The real reason for getting a saltwater system is convenience. As for downsides, the main thing to be aware of is that there are a lot of reports of the saltwater corroding natural stone finishes on decking and water features. The saltwater itself is not particularly corrosive - it's like 1/20th the salt concentration of seawater. The problem is when the water gets splashed out on the deck or water features, and then the water evaporates and leaves the salt behind. We plan on combatting this by just rinsing down the deck and waterfall after we use the pool. If we have problems, there are sealants you can use to protect the stone from the salt, but they are pretty expensive. I haven't done exhaustive research, but I looked into one brand that my tile distributor sells, and it would cost me $500-700 to buy the materials to seal just our rock waterfall. So we will definitely try the "preventative maintenance" approach first, and see how that goes.

The next part of this project is straightforward - removing the old tablet feeder, which will no longer be used. The original pool builder did not know what they were doing (as evidenced by many things I've found in our pool), and plumbed the chlorinator in the wrong place. Any chlorinator - whether it be saltwater or tablets or whatever - should be plumbed in after the heater, right before the returns. Ours was plumbed in right after the pump, before the filter. The result of this negligence is that we no longer have a working heater for our spa. We've repaired it several times to try to keep it running, but the insides of the heater are so corroded out now that it's beyond repair. Now that we will have a saltwater system, we no longer need the tablet chlorinator. I could just leave it there, and I would if it were plumbed in the correct place, but I want to remove it so that no in the future will make the mistake of using it again.

The last part of the equipment project is adding a 2-speed pump timer. Last fall, we replaced the original 2HP pump with a 1.5HP 2-speed model. This mad a lot of sense because for our regular pool circulation, we only need a 3/4 HP pump, but we need more power to operate the spa jets when using the spa. This is basically what 2 speed pumps were invented for - run the pump in low speed for your circulation, and switch it to high speed as needed for vacuuming, running the spa, etc. When I originally installed the pump, I wired in a simple switch to change speeds - 90% of the time, we left it running in low speed, and when we needed high speed we just flipped a switch.

We noticed a few problems with this setup, however. First of all, the skimmer doesn't operate effectively (read - at all) in low speed, so we didn't get a lot of surface skimming. Second, we noticed that the water level in the spa was dropping, which was caused by the low pressure (from the pump in low speed) wouldn't operate the check valve correctly. As a result, the check valve would get hung open slightly, and water would backsiphon out of the spa into the pool. To solve this, it would be desireable to run the pump on high speed part of every day. In particular, running the pump for 30 minutes or so (we'll play with the exact timing when we're up and running) on high at the end of the pump cycle should reset the check valve in the spa, and skim whatever is floating on the surface. To accomplish this, we bought a special timer that connects between the on/off timer and the pump and can switch the pump speed at preset times.

So, that should keep me busy until we're ready to apply the Ultraguard. Look for an update later this week.