The Salt Level Keeps Dropping in your Salt Water Swimming Pool

Have you noticed the need to add an unusually high amount of pool salt to your salt swimming pool, or maybe you can't add salt fast enough to keep up with the required salt level to allow the salt chlorine generator to produce enough chlorine for the pool? If so, there is always a logical reason why the salt level keeps dropping.

An average size residential swimming pool (15,000 to 18,000 gallons) that uses a salt chlorinator will require an addition of two to four 40 lb bags of salt each year to keep the minimum salt level needed to produce adequate chlorine. It could be a little more or less depending on the climate and activity level in the pool, but if you find yourself adding much more salt than that, it probably indicates a problem.

Since salt does not evaporate from pool water, the only way the salt level will drop is when the salt water is removed from the pool and refilled with fresh fill water. This only happens in a few ways.

Splash Out - during active swimming when swimmers get in and out of the pool or the kids are playing and splashing, water is being removed from the pool.

Rain - when it rains, fresh rain water is added to the pool and eventually some salt water will need to be drained to keep the proper water level in the pool.

Leak in the Pool - The most common reason for quick loss of salt in a salt pool is water leaking from somewhere in the pool system.

Of these three reasons, a leak in the pool is really the only reason the salt level will continuously be dropping. So if it's not swimming season or rainy season and the salt reading continues to drop, it's also a good indication that there is a leak somewhere in the pool that is causing the salt loss.

But before coming to this conclusion, make sure to first confirm with an independent test that the salt level reading on the salt water chlorinator is giving you a correct reading. This can be done a couple of different ways.

Test Strips - buy some salt pool test strips and test the salt level yourself.

Pool Store Test - bring in a sample of your pool water to the local pool store and ask them to test the salt level.



Compare the results of the independent test to that of the salt generator reading. If they are substantially different, there could be a problem with the salt chlorinator. If they are the same, there is probably a leak somewhere in the pool system.

 

 

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