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Discounted Zodiac Clearwater Salt Cells

zodiac trti salt celll blog

Epools is happy to announce new discounted Zodiac salt chlorinator salt cells.

The new price is up to 30% off our already low price. This is not a special for a limited time. But our new current price for these cells.

The models included in this are:

 

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Salt Chlorinator Repair Services

justpools services and repairs

Contact Us for Salt Chlorinator Repair Services

Hello Again

This is David the Justpools Service Technician
I just wanted to share with you one of my experiences with salt water chlorinators.

I had occasion to go out to a client’s residence to find out why his chlorinator was not working.
The service call had been requested by the client as his pool water tests kept showing low chlorine levels, however the client informed me that the unit appeared to be operating normally with plenty of gas coming from the cell during operation.
I arrived at the property and had a look to see what was going on.
The first thing i did was a water test to check for ph level and chlorine level, the results of the test showed that the ph level
was on the high side and the amount of free chlorine was very low.
My next step was to check the operation of the chlorinator and with the unit in operation I found that chlorinator was working normally.

After some more investigation I found the cause of the problem, it turned out that the client had the incorrect run times set up in the timer on the chlorinator. The run time set on the chlorinator time clock was from 10.am to 6pm daily.
That’s an operating cycle of 8 hrs per day.
Now the chlorinator was set on 100% output and was of a large capacity (35grams per hour) and with a run time like that for a 50,000 litre pool you would think that there would be plenty of chlorine in the pool, so how come very little or no chlorine ???.

To be able to answer this I need to explain a little bit about how the system works.
Now when you see a salt water chlorinator in operation and look at the electrode cell in the housing you will see a cloud of gas coming of the cell. This is caused by the reaction of the current between the plates of the cell and the salt (sodium chloride) in the water. I won’t go further into this as the chemical equations are quite complex, but in simple terms the sodium chloride molecule is broken down in to sodium and chlorine. The chlorine does its job of sanitizing the water and at a later stage in the reaction the chemicals recombine to form sodium chloride or salt.
The reason for that explanation is to try to make you understand that the chlorine coming off the electrode cell is of a very dilute nature and takes quite a while to build up to a concentrated level.

Now having said that you need to know that the worst enemy of chlorine is ultraviolet radiation which naturally comes from the sunlight. So in this case what was happening was that there was a dilute amount of chlorine coming off the cell and going into the pool, which was then pretty much being broken down by the action of the sunlight with the end result of a low chlorine level in the pool water at the end of the run.
The remedy to this was to do a split run, What i did was to set a morning run out of the strong sunlight hrs which was from 6 am to 9.30am and then an evening after sun run which was from 6pm to 10pm.
What happens in that setup is lets say at the start of the evening run the chlorine level is low, by the end of the evening run the chlorine level will have built up and it will sit there overnight sanitizing the water and then the early morning run kicks in and boosts the chlorine level high which gives it enough to last through to the evening run.
By using this method you can be sure of having chlorine in the water.

However this was not the only issue. the other issue was the high level of ph in the water.
When chlorine is added to water, one result is that the ph of the water is increased through the reaction of the chlorine and the water. A ph level that is above or below 7.5 has two side effects, one of them is that eye irritation can occur and the other is that chlorine becomes less effective as a sanitizer the more the ph is out from the normal range

Going back to the client, once i had added some acid to the water to bring the ph level to where it should be and added some liquid chlorine to the pool water to bring the amount of free chlorine to the right level and reset the time clock on the chlorinator,
within a few days his pool was back to normal.
I advised the client to give a daily dose of acid to the pool rather than a weekly dose to help keep the ph in balance.

Of course the better way to do this is by installing a chlorinator with a built in ph monitoring and acid dispensing system
Well that’s all for now till next time
regards
DAvid
Justpools Service Technician

Or call 1300 658 313

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Epools Salt Chlorinator Repair Service

justpools services and repairs

Repair or replace the chlorinator

In a lot of cases it is more economical and convenient to have your chlorinator repaired by us using our express repair service, rather than outlay the cost of purchasing a new chlorinator and more often than not having to pay for the new chlorinator to be installed due to difference’s in the plumbing configuration.

Here at Epools we can now offer you the choice of our express repair service, whereby you can have your faulty chlorinator sent to us via the post and we can tell you exactly what the cost will be for your chlorinator to be repaired prior to repairs being carried out or we can advise and recommend a suitable replacement unit if your existing unit is proven to be uneconomical for repair.

Use this Link to have a look at our Salt Chlorinator Express Service Page.

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Salt Water Chlorinator Cells

blog article re salt chlorinator cells

I recently responded to a customers inquiry regarding a zodiac lm3 series chlorinator, this was the issue the customer was having

Received the Zodiac LM3 40 Salt Chlorinator April 2014 from Epools.
At the moment we have a slight problem.
The Salt Cell display gives the note that salt has to be added but there is enough salt in the pool (checked by poolman).
The edges on the bottom of the swimming pool are getting slowly green (the side were sun does not come).
For 11 years we use Zodiac and never had problems so do not know how to solve this.
The poolman thinks that the cell does not work correctly.
Can you advise in this? Is there a possibility to reset?
Many thanks in advance for your help.
Kind regards,
Yvonne
and after reading her query i replied with this information
Hi Yvonne

The add salt or low salt light comes on when the chlorinator detects lower than normal electrical current passing thru the cell.

there are three or four things that can cause this, the most common being the build up of calcium deposits on the plates of the cell.

Now I know that your chlorinator is a self cleaning model, however many people make the wrong assumption that because it is self cleaning

you never need to clean it.

That is not the case. The best interpretation of self cleaning is that non self cleaning models would need cleaning every three to four weeks or less depending on the water chemistry and

self cleaning models need cleaning every eight to nine weeks. if this is not done then the result will be a calcium build up on the plates of the cell.

cleaning the cell is a simple process, it involves removal o the cell and immersing it in a solution of 10% of hydrochloric acid ( 100ml of acid per litre of water) for about 10-15 minutes,

then rinsing the cell and re installing it in the housing.

hopefully this will solve the issue for you,

as it turned out the cell was past its use by date and needed to be replaced, since then the customer has purchased and installed a new cell and the chlorinator is now working perfectly.
cell life can vary depending on how it is set up, one of the most common incorrect setups i have seen is the run times being incorrectly setup.
to understand this you need to have an appreciation of how the system works.
A salt cell generates chlorine in a very dilute form and it needs time for the level of chlorine to build up in the water. In this situation if for example you have the run time set to say 9.00am start to 3.00pm finish you are getting 6 hours of chlorination with unfortunately very little actual chlorine in the water. Why?? The answer is that while the cell is generating the dilute amount of chlorine, the action of the sun light is breaking down the chlorine as it is being produceds with the result of low chlorine after the run is finished.
What happens then is most people turn up the output of the chlorinator and increase the run time to try to get more chlorine in the water with the result that the cell ends up having a shortened life span.
So what is the correct way to get the desired result??
The answer is simple.
Split your run times to 3 hours before the sun and 3 hours after the sun
that way you end up with a good level of chlorine in the water and a longer life span on the cell
Lets look at the afternoon run time in such a setup.
lets say the first run starts a 6.00pm, and finishes at 9.00pm.
At 6.00 pm there is normally very little sunlight on the water so the chlorine level starts rising and at the end of the run there is a decent amount of chlorine in the water.
The chlorine stays in the water overnight and does its job and then the morning run kicks in lets say 6.00am to 9.00am and this then boosts the already decent amount of chlorine to a higher level.
Then during the day the sun acts on the chlorine breaking it down but by the time the evening run kicks in there is still some chlorine left in the water and then the cycle repeats itself.
In Yvonne’s case she did have her run time split into early morning and late evening and as you can see her cell lasted he 11 years
so maybe after reading this it may be a good idea to check how your chlorinator run time is set
Regards
Justpools
Service Tech