Calcified salt cell

Were you sold a salt system for your swimming pool because you were told the pool was going to be easier to take care of, that the water would feel much softer and you wouldn’t have to use chlorine? If you were, you aren’t alone. As many of these facts are correct, there are a few that need to be explained in more depth because owning a salt system for your swimming pool in the Las Vegas area can be a little more challenging. As you can tell by the picture above, that is calcium hardness which is located in our fill water here in Las Vegas. This is a common site in our area and when this happens, the salt cell will no longer work. That means, it will no longer generate chlorine, algae can bloom and maintenance becomes a lot more tricky. We hope this blog gives you some insight on how to handle this and how we can help.

Most salt systems that are sold on the market today recommend calcium hardness to between 200 – 400 parts per million (ppm). Unfortunately, in the Las Vegas/Henderson area, the water coming out of the tap is 400ppm and higher which means your water is already too hard for the system. That means, scaling will occur on the electrode plates, the system will struggle to work, and the salt cell will need to be cleaned. Depending on what type system you have, you can use a tool to remove the calcium or an acid bath. Please note that the system itself can only handle a certain amount of acid baths because it will wear down the cell. But if you don’t do anything with the water, this will happen regularly.

Clean salt cell

At Clark County Pool & Lawn we have a couple of different options that we would like to share with you to help you with the calcium hardness issue.  As you can see from the picture above, we have the ability to clean and take care of these cells for you. As for purchasing the correct salt cell system, there are a couple of brands that can handle higher hardness in the water which is something you will want to look into. Keeping the calcium hardness in your swimming pool water lower will also be necessary. Using our mobile filtration system that houses Reverse Osmosis (RO) filtration is by far the best way to lower calcium hardness in your swimming pool. Since we use RO membranes to lower calcium hardness, total dissolved solids (TDS), cyanuric acid (CYA) and so much more we are able to bring down your calcium concentration to 150ppm. This will allow your salt cell to work much better too. If you have any questions on our mobile filtration system or even the salt water chlorinators that we recommend, contact us today!