Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Ok so this will be a long post but I want to give you full details. We put our pool up the first week of June and started out doing the typical chlorine chemicals. They are just so bad on my and my daughters skin so I began looking into the Intex Salt Water Generators. I struggled for 2 weeks on if I should purchase it or not because the reviews are so mixed. Truly 50/50 On liking and disliking the product. So I decided to give it a try especially since Amazon would allow me to return it for 30 days. Before it arrived I read as much as I could about the system and it’s pros and cons. As well as what other people had learned in their set up process. The first thing I should say is we have an above ground Intex pool 15’ round 42” deep. We bought it at academy sports. It came with the standard 750/1200 gallon per hour filter. Then when the SWG arrived I read the instruction booklet from start to finish. The first mistake it seems people make is they add salt to their pool and turn the Intex SWG on immediately. DONT DO THAT. One thing I can say to not follow the book on is how much salt to add to your pool. The book says way too much. I started out adding a bag and a half of salt which is roughly 60lbs. We let the pump circulate the water with added salt for 24 hours before turning the SWG on. The next day we turned on the SWG and it ran perfectly fine no problem. Day 3 it ran again no problem. I took a sample of water to our local pool store and they ran the water test. Everything looked good except he said my salt level was only 2800 PPM. That I needed to add more salt. So, I went home and added the other 20 lbs of salt and let the pool circulate it overnight and turned my SWG. Within just a few minutes it started shutting down because of “High Salt” alarm. I took another sample of water by the pool store the next day and the PPM has gone up to 3200 which is really a great number to be at in regards to other salt systems. However the Intex SWG kept giving me a “high salt” alarm and shutting down. It took me a couple days of doing 15-20% water changes to get the PPM back below 3000 and then the system started working again. We’ve had no problems since. It seems to me that the Intex SWG system is not made to really function at the 3200PPM and higher levels. Yes I know that the pool stores tell you that 3000-3400 PPM is like the best range for producing chlorine but in my experience the Intex system just cannot function. I have kept my PPM around 2800 and the system has not given us a high salt alarm since. I’ve onky added salt one time and that was after several days of down pour rain and I knew the water had to have a much lower salt PPM from the rain. So I just very slowly added salt over a couple of days. No more than about 3-4 cups full a day. Again my PPM was back to 2800 and it’s been working fine. From what I’ve read online about other salt systems and just the whole science behind converting salt water to chlorine is that as long as you have a PPM of at least 2400 then your SWG will produce chlorine. Of course the higher you can get that PPM without going over 3400 the faster and easier it is for your SWG to produce the chlorine. So you may try with your system to go beyond the 2800 PPM. If you do let me know how it works out. I’m sure there will be several folks who disagree but this has worked for us and we’ve loved it ever since we got the levels figured out. We have beautiful water and it’s been so much better for our skin. Best of Luck!!!