It's Still The Environment, Stupid, Part II

I just wanted to add a little to what I said a couple of weeks ago. I've been doing some light reading. It's pretty interesting stuff. California Assembly Bill 2270, better known as AB2270. It has the whole Water Quality industry in an uproar.

Here's the part they take exception to: "This bill would authorize any local agency that maintains a community sewer system to take action to control residential salinity inputs, including those from water softeners, to protect the quality of the waters of the state, if the appropriate regional board makes a finding that the control of residential salinity input will contribute to the achievement of water quality objectives."

They're really upset about the water softener thing. Because the WQA, or Water Quality Association represents the interests of salt based water softeners lots more than they represent the interests of water quality. If you think I exaggerate, Google AB2270.

See? Every return is some internet snippet about how to go about OPPOSING AB2270. Initially, I Googled AB2270 thinking to read the assembly bill. But the internet is so cluttered with opposition to AB2270 that you can't find it that way. I had to Google California State Assembly and then enter the bill number and get it that way. Oddly, it passed 27-12 on the Senate floor and 53-19 on the Assembly floor.

So, how is it that the opposition can have so much rhetoric on the internet and so little popular support in the government? Too, this bill will cost the State money. They're allotting some bucks in there for reimbursement to people who have to unhook their salt based water softeners. So, it's taking business out of the State and it's going to cost the State money to unhook the systems. Why would they vote for that?

Because they mandated a goal of recycling 1,000,000 acre-feet of USEABLE waste water by the year 2010. As in the 2010 that's two years from now. One year, 3 months to be exact. And that's 1,000,000 acre-feet, which is 326 BILLION gallons of water.

Along the way, they found out that people and plants don't like salty water. So, this bill helps them to get to their goal by allowing the local water authorities to "control residential salinity inputs". Because they want better Water Quality. Then, along comes the Water Quality Association and opposes it.

Odd. Wouldn't you say?

Anyway, with my new found desire to be FOR things, instead of just AGAINST them, I want to announce that I am FOR AB2270. Not that I can vote in California or anything. But then, I don't imagine that many of the folks at WQA really live in California, either. They clearly spend a lot of money lobbying in California. But live there? Not so much.

After all these years, It still stuns me when I run up against a group of people who can't see that what they're FOR is BAD for everybody else. It's only GOOD for their particular pocketbooks. Color me incredibly naive, but I still believe that if they outlawed swimming pools, I'd spend my meager savings on figuring out a New Gig, instead of blowing my reserves trying to hold back the Hands of The Clock.

Which segue's nicely to talking about How Much Salt Pools Suck. I feel pretty certain that the reason AB2270 didn't have any provisions for Salt Pools is because it's not a code requirement that they hook up backwash lines to the sewer in California. Even still, there's the Santa Clarita ban on Salt Pools. But my point is, that once other states start taking a look at what California has done with AB2270, they'll cut and paste it onto their legislative agendas. And if, in those states, it's code for swimming pools to backwash to the sewer, then they'll add that Santa 

Clarita addendum to the whole package, and Viola! No More Salt Pools.

PS: I added new links to 2 industry articles about the ravages of salt systems on swimming pools. Click on them to your right under the heading Why Salt Is Eating Up Your Pool. Bon Appetit...

It's Still The Environment, Stupid

I was looking at my site meter the other day and noticed that one of my biggest fans had been visiting the blog nearly every day. So I dropped him an e-mail to ask if he’d like an alert when I published something new, and he answered back that he was “just visiting your blog to kill time… to see if there was anything new”. It made me realize it’s been awhile since I’ve posted. A lot’s happened in Salt World since my last post.

As a fer instance, Pool & Spa News came out as definitely in the Salt Camp (see Pool & Spa News, July 31, 2008). Hmmm... maybe that's why they quit corresponding with me. You think?

They even titled the whole issue Salt Service Solutions. It has some information that will actually help people stuck taking care of salt pools. But, like all good marketing pieces, it passes that information with a lilt in the author’s voice and skip in his step. Sort of like Snow White doing the housework with the help of chipmunks and bluebirds set to Roger’s & Hammerstein. But when you chase out the critters and cut the music, you see that taking care of salt pools is still just Doing The Dirty Work.

As another fer’instance:

Governor Charlie Crist is going to sign A BILL passed unanimously by both houses of the Florida legislature that will shut down the discharge of something like 300 million gallons of treated waste into the Atlantic Ocean each day. They’re stopping for myriad reasons, one of which is that the discharge is killing the corral reefs. If you’re wondering what that’s got to do with salt systems, it’s what’s going to happen when those municipalities start trying to recycle that wastewater and run up against high salinity levels and the expense of desalinization and start looking for ways to reduce the salinity, and like other municipalities, start restricting chloride discharge into the waste stream, like HERE. Then later, they’ll get around to your salt pool, like HERE and HERE

It goes kind of hand-in-hand with a STORY at the Tampa Tribune Online, about how Pasco County wants to expand a treated waste water program to eventually include 30,000 cusotmers, who will use treated wastewater for their lawns. And that’s where I feel like I’ve “been there, done that”. SCOTTSDALE did the same thing a while ago. Then, within a few years, the golf courses using the treated effluent started yapping that their greens weren’t green anymore, and the culprit was high chloride levels in the treated wastewater. If you read the letter from the Environmental Manager in Thousand Oaks, CA that I LINKED TO about a paragraph back, you know that salinity, chloride in particular, is a pass-through pollutant. In other words, it’s not normally filtered out of wastewater.

That was one of the hinky things about the Pool & Spa article, Grains Of Wisdom. On page 37, in the box titled Salt Select, they quote Bob Harper as saying that it’s okay to use potassium chloride. I quote; “In areas where salt going into the water system is not desirable, it does provide an alternative”.

By the way, his company, Goldline, is the only one who says that. Ecomatic, Jandy, Pentair, Zodiac, Autopilot and The Chlorine Factory all say to use Sodium Chloride Only. Ecomatic, in fact, says, “be sure to use sodium chloride and not potassium chloride.”

Besides, Bob should know better than that. He’s been The Man at Goldline since November 2006. So, he should know that sodium chloride dissociates immediately when it hits the water into sodium and chloride, and potassium chloride does the same thing. HERE'S a quote from Water Technology Magazine about using potassium chloride instead of sodium chloride (remember, these are the folks trying to put a positive spin on water softeners): "potassium chloride is a viable alternative to sodium chloride... when the application requires a... low sodium waste brine". Notice they didn't say Low Chloride. And if you ever notice, when water treatment folks are complaining about this stuff, they always refer to the “elevated chloride levels” in the wastewater stream. Like that pesky Santa Clarita, California Salt Pool Ban, which in the introduction says, "The purpose of this website is to educate the community about the Santa Clara River's high chloride (salt) levels, and the reasons and options for reducing chloride levels", [emphasis mine]. In fact, they don't use the words sodium or potassium anywhere in their introduction.

So, like I was saying, when the potassium hits the water, it turns into potassium and chloride. When it’s pumped out of your pool and onto the ground or into the sewer, it doesn’t resociate and become potassium chloride again. So, the chloride ends up adding to the chloride level of the wastewater stream. It may later combine with potassium and form potassium chloride again. Then again, it may combine with sodium and form sodium chloride, or calcium and form calcium chloride. But as long as it stays in water, it’s just chloride. If it wasn’t dissociated, you couldn’t create chlorine from the chloride ions that result from pitching sodium or potassium chloride in your pool. Get it?

And you may say, “Well, Bob’s degree is in marketing, so why would he know all that?”

My point exactly. But then, it was Pool & Spa News who asked him the question. Not me.

One other note on potassium chloride; it sells for $18.97 a 40 lbs. bag at Lowe’s. Home Depot’s about the same. Sodium chloride runs about five or six bucks a bag.

Another point about that same inset box, they show you a picture of Coarse Solar Salt, Kiln Dried. It is classified as a Water Softener salt by the manufacturer, and on their website, they say it’s “99.5 pure salt”, and “contains small amounts of insoluble particles from the environment”. That would be the 0.5% that’s not-salt.

IMPORTANT PARAGRAPH AHEAD. IF YOU’RE SCANNING AND NOT READING, MAKE SURE TO READ THIS:

What we found here in Dallas, by having similar grade salts from a different manufacturer analyzed by a metallurgist, is that the solid residue was “0.427% of the salt sample, by weight”. Pretty close to 0.5%. These solids split into about a 50/50 mix of gray and red particles, and the “red particle was silica sand (SiO2) containing alumina and iron oxide (red rust)”, hence the reddish stains we were seeing.

You see, we were running into issues of staining as a result of pouring 500 or 600 lbs. of salt on pool start up (after waiting the 30 days, of course) and ending up with stains where the salt laid and dissolved. Some service companies had started noticing less pronounced but still noticeable stains from just adding one or two bags of salt. One company even started to add all salt through the skimmers as a result of the staining problem. So, salt grade became pretty important to us. And, it turned out, important to our supplier, who did The Right Thing and decided to step up their game and only sell Food Grade salt, less the 0.5% insoluble environmental particles.

In fact, Pool & Spa News has been selling ad space to folks selling food grade salt since shortly after this all went down. Coincidence?

I mention this for all the people who like to be dismissive of me by saying “it’s easy to be against something. Why don’t you try being FOR something?” So, there you go. I’m FOR not staining pools by using contaminated salt.

All it took to be FOR that was $5.00 for the bag of salt, about $150.00 for the metallurgist’s analysis and the desire to Right a Wrong. Now, ask yourself, what have YOU done to bring about a positive change in our industry lately? Oh, yeah, let me qualify that; a change that didn’t end up putting money in your pocket.

It’s a Small Club, isn’t it?

Another reason to be a little careful about the salt you select is that if you choose, say, Diamond Crystal salt pellets with Softener Care, you’ll be adding phosphates along with the salt pellets, and Oh-Dear-Lord-In-Heaven-Above, don’t get the Snake Oil… I mean, the Phosphate Remover Guys all riled up about putting phosphates in your pools. You see, the Softener Care additive is sodium hexametahosphate. Each bag is 0.03%. Doesn't sound like a lot, but for a 20,000 gallon pool, 550 lbs. of salt will add 2.6 ounces, by weight, pure sodium hexametaphosphate. 3.2 ounces if you’re running a Zodiac, because they require 670 lbs. for the same size pool.

On the same page in the article, right above the Salt Select box, is a box labeled Mixing metals. It’s nice to see The Industry finally talking about it. I started talking about it on October 14th of 2006, right after Baboosa put me on to the term and I looked it up. I’ve written 10 more pieces to go along with that, because I think it’s that important (see Salt and Metal Parts tag). P&SN gave about 6 column inches to it, and that included their whole discussion of TDS as well. Salt systems nearly sunk two ladder and rail manufacturers, took a huge toll on pool heaters and copper plumbed pools, and just about every other piece of metal that comes in contact with your pool, and Galvanic Corrosion got six column inches. Oh, well.

But enough about that. Let’s go back to the opening paragraph of this article. By the way, that guy pouring the salt in the pool is either photoshopped in or he’s about 8 feet tall. His feet dwarf that brick coping. And he casts no shadow. Hmm… Vampire? No, that’s no reflection in a mirror. Anyway…

“The systems…are dummy-proof,” says Scott Ford of Tropical Aquatics. And using that as an opening statement, P&SN takes up four pages explaining how different and special and destructive salt pools can be.

For example, this article recommends that you maintain salt pools at a 7.2 pH. That is destined to lead people to read that and think that there’s a new standard for salt pools, set around 7.2 instead of 7.5, and so anything from 6.9 to 7.5 will be okay. Huh?

I’m looking at my old NSPI guidelines and it says here that Ideal pH is 7.4 to 7.6. That’s pretty much what’s been taught at every water chemistry seminar that everybody in our industry has ever attended and is pretty much what everybody in our industry lives by. Well, everybody except for the Hamilton Index crowd, or the Tin Foil Hat Brigade, as I like to call them.



Oddly, though, I agree with 7.2. Not as the new center of our scale, but as the lowest allowable for a salt pool, as the target to shoot for each week during service because the one thing you know with a salt pool is the pH is going to rise.

The issue here isn’t whether I agree with a deviation of 0.3 on the pH scale (7.2 vs 7.5), which is still a lot, pH being an exponential scale and all. 7.2 represents water that is 4 times more acidic, hence four times more etching, than 7.5.

The issue is that SOMEONE BESIDES A MAGAZINE needs to go on record as saying that salt pools are different chemically and they need their own well researched and well documented, not to mention well publicized, water chemistry parameters. AJ Wilson, who they’re quoting here, is a sharp guy. He knows his stuff and he’s right about this 7.2 thing.

What he’s getting at is that if you have a salt pool, you’re going to see a rise in pH from week to week. So, if you start at 7.2, maybe you’ll end up at 7.8 by your next visit, instead of starting at 7.5 and ending up at 8.2 by your next visit. 8.2 and any Total Alkalinity between the APSP recommended 80 to 120 ppm will cause lots of scaling with that high calcium San Diego water AJ is dealing with. Not so much here in Dallas, where our tap water is 70 to 120 ppm and we have to add calcium after startup.

So, I agree with what AJ’s saying. But where’s the test pools to prove it? Where's the industry sanctioned research behind these conclusions? The current APSP standards weren't written over dinner and drinks at some pool show, you know. Research went into determining those parameters.

But since we're fiddling with pH, why not fiddle with TA, too? Won’t lowering TA a little, perhaps outside of the biblical 80 to 120 ppm we preach, have a similar effect on this issue? Of course it will. But then we’re right back where we started, aren’t we? It’s just a bunch of pool guys trying to pass on helpful information to other pool guys, and the end result is more likely to be that you’ll get hung out to dry if something goes wrong and you tell your customer or, even worse, the builder, “oh, this magazine I read said to ignore the APSP guidelines for water chemistry, so I’ve been running it acidic the last couple of years”.

This all goes back to when Salt Reps were standing up in front of whole rooms full of pool guys, at association meetings and such, and when we would tell them about the inherent rise in pH of their systems, they would say, “That’s impossible. Salt systems produce pH neutral chlorine.” That was the whole answer. End of discussion. Move on. And while some of them may have since amended their story and admitted that, well, maybe there sorta coulda might be a rise in pH with a salt system, they haven’t done anything to go back and do any real research to come up with water chemistry guidelines unique to salt pools.

Instead, they leave it to guys like AJ Wilson and guys like me to take the liability on our shoulders. Read the owner’s manuals. That’s what they’ll be waving at you in court.

For example, Goldine’s owner’s manual says to follow APSP guidelines and then tells you keep pH between 7.2 to 7.6.

APSP guidelines are 7.4 to 7.6. So, which is it? APSP guidelines or 7.2? Remember, a 0.2 difference is three times as acidic. If 0.1 is twice as acidic, then 0.2 is three times as acidic.

Jandy Aquapure’s owner’s manual says with their system, the “pH produced is close to Neutral pH and tends to stabilize at approximately 7.8.” (You thought I was making it up about the Reps saying that Neutral thing, didn’t you?)

Well, once again, which is it? Neutral or 7.8. Because 7.8 is a long, long way from Neutral. It’s 0.8, in fact, and if you were shaking your head over Goldline’s contradiction about just a few tenths on the pH scale, now we’re talking about water 8 times more scaling than Neutral pH.

Ecomatic recommends 7.2 to 7.8 and then goes into an explanation almost as long as this blog piece about why that, and your TA level might not work for you, and how it’s all sorta…ya’ know… Whhhhhppppp… hold it… hold it…. Phhewwww… Out There, Maaa-a-n, and you’ll know when you have it right because your pH will stop fluctuating – which is true, but their explanation needs about 8 hours of water chemistry classroom training to fill in the gaps. Remember too, we're talking about the Owner’s Manual, geared for everybody down to the pool owner who, going in, knows nothing about balancing water.

Then, Zodiac, who has the highest salt requirement of any mainstream salt system available in the US, recommends 7.4 to 7.6, just like APSP.

Autopilot says 7.2 to 7.8, allowing +- 0.3 pH of saturation. And that’s great if you’re a pool tech. You can look at the charts provided and actually make out what their version of balanced water is supposed to be. But getting back to the Target Audience; Joe Pool Owner. Is he going to get it? Or is he going to let his eyes roll back in his head and say, “Yeah, Honey, everything’s fine. The kids can swim.”

Because the truth is, if he really did wade through all this and used the chart and the calculator and did all the math, what he’ll find out is that come winter, if his pool water is balanced at 60 degrees F, 600 ppm Calcium Hardness, 75 Total Alkalinity and TDS Above 1000, he’s got to tell the wife that they can’t heat the spa to 103 until he either raises the Total Alkalinity to 125 or lowers the pH to 7.2, and then reverts back to the previous readings before the spa cools off again.

A note in passing: Is the fact that no one ever worries about that the reason that plaster in spas on pool/spa combos with salt systems always gets those little calcium nodules? I vote Yes. And voting’s all we’re going to do, anyway. There’s no research going on beyond what Pool Guys are doing, at their own peril of liability, in their customer’s back yards. If I’m wrong, and there’s this whole industry of research happening that none of us out here in the field know about, then somebody write and tell me.

By Golly, Scott’s right. These systems are “dummy-proof”.

Now, I’m going to beat Sean to the punch here. As he’s reading this, he’s hopping up and down behind his laptop, scrolling down to the comments section to write and tell us that if that’s what we’re all worried about, then why not just use AutoPilot’s Total Control System and let the machine monitor and adjust the pH, too?

And I say - like I always say about salt systems - if your idea of “better” is spending yet more and more money on yet more and more “accessories” for your pool, then by all means, buy it.

Or, you could just use chlorine tablets and enjoy pretty much rock solid pH that “tends to stabilize” somewhere around 7.5. Not 7.4. Not 7.2. Not 7.8.

Seven Point Five.

And if you want soft water, buy Twenty Mule Team Borax for $2.99 a 4 lbs. box and really live it up.

Well, we’ve gotten to the second page of the P&SN article… Just kidding. That’s really about it. The only other thing I keyed on, and it’s probably just a poor choice of adverb, was this: “The conditioner – typically cyanuric acid – only protects the chlorine”. Typically? That implies there are other “types” of stabilizer. Did I miss something? I know I’m getting old. Did ya’ll come up with something else to stabilize chlorine while I was taking my afternoon nap?

So, what’s the Governor of Florida and Pasco County got to do with any of this? Well, several years ago, in California, when they started looking really hard at their dwindling water resources and began considering and then implementing reuse, certain areas zeroed in on salt based water softeners as one way to improve their wastewater quality. Soon after, certain water districts banned water softeners. Then, Santa Clarita banned salt systems on pools that backwashed to the sewer. Now, the Governor of California is poised TO SIGN LEGISLATION allowing every water district, at their discretion, to ban salt based water softeners.

California Assemblyman John Laird said this about the Water Softener Industry, who are the only people lobbying against the bill; “ It’s not time to protect somebody that’s polluting groundwater at a time that we have to rely increasingly more on groundwater as part of a comprehensive solution”.

A few years from now, when the water they’re starting to reuse in Florida isn’t working out so well because of its high chloride content, The Governor of Florida, or the Mayor of Tampa will be saying the same thing about water softeners – and later, salt pools – in Florida. And then when you come to this blog, you’ll see a whole list of counties and states and water districts that have banned their use.

It started with Santa Clarita. It spread to Dixon, CA and then Scottsdale, AZ, and now the whole state of California. And the pattern is the same. They try to reuse their wastewater and then they find out how damaging that water is.

And time after time, the only people who oppose the restrictions are people making money off the pollution of our groundwater. That would be people who sell appliances that use tremendous amounts of salt for their operation. You know, like water softeners and pool salt systems and... water softeners and pool salt systems and... Yep. That about covers it.

I stated earlier that the P&SN article talked about how destructive salt systems can be. The very last thing they talk about - almost reluctantly, it seems - is "Compatible equipment". They talk about how hard salt systems can be on the aluminum tracks for an automatic pool cover. They quote Randy Parsons as saying, "I've had a number of [pools] where the tracks have been destroyed by salt." Word here in Texas from the local Automatic Cover Guru is that when those tracks are corroded, they usually have to be jackhammered out of the tile line to replace them. You see, they're set into the tile line at the time of pool construction, and so having a corroded track is just about the worst and most expensive thing that could happen to a pool owner.

Boy, P&SN, talk about Burying The Lead.

Many of you in the industry who read this blog regularly who think I’m So Wrong on So Many Levels, you ought to take a moment here and re-read some of my earlier pieces.

I ranted about stone and concrete damage and the manufacturers and reps called me a liar. Now they have all added disclaimers to their owner’s manuals and websites.

I was the first in the industry, with Baboosa’s nudging, to talk about salt systems causing galvanic corrosion. The manufacturers and the reps called me crazy out of one side of their mouth and told you all to put zinc balls in your pump baskets out the other.

I was the first one to talk about Exploding Salt Cells and everybody and their brother jumped up and down and called me certifiably insane. And then I pointed out half a dozen incidents of it occurring around the world, and can point you now to ANOTHER POOL GUY’S BLOG (scroll down to SAFETY) where he describes first hand his experience with the explosion of a properly installed salt cell.

I’ve talked a lot about the environmental impact of your salt pools on our environment, and you all say I’m overstating the case, even after I’ve pointed out several places where levels of sodium and chloride in wastewater are being legislated and even your salt system manufacturers now work a caution about how salt will “damage or destroy certain types of plants” into their disclaimers. In case you Missed a Memo, those Dead Plants are The Environment.

I can just hear ya’ll at the public hearings when they outlaw these things; “But my kids can swim with their eyes open underwater. That ought to be worth something!”

Good luck with that.

And we haven’t even talked about the lawsuits that have started to pop up, as pool owners file suit against builders and builders turn around and file suit against manufacturers. Oh, you hadn’t heard? And, yes, I predicted that, too.

Folks, the Titanic has hit the Iceberg. You can either make for the Lifeboats or Stand Around and Rearrange the Deckchairs.

To put it literally instead of metaphorically; the manufacturers and the media in our industry are doing everything they can to create a body of work – sometimes referred to as evidence in the event of future litigation – that says, “We warned those pool stores and builders and service guys that there were downsides and that they needed to think really hard before they sold these salt systems. Look, we wrote about it here in our warranties and over here in our media publications and over here on our websites. We Have No Liability if things go astray after installation”.

No one’s going to hold their feet to the fire over what they say in a marketing brochure. No one’s ever going to lose a lawsuit over No More Green Hair! But in the little-read and oft-overlooked Fine Print, they’ve covered their asses quite well.

It’s called The Writing On The Wall. Take a moment and read it.

It’s The Environment, Stupid… And The Taxes

I learned something from a Salt Rep a while back. To set Google Alerts for things like Chlorine Generator and Salt System and Salt Ban and Electrolysis and Southland Leisure Centre, and that way I can track any information that pops up on the web on any of these topics.

It has been a gold mine of information. Take, for example, this headline that came to me by way of the Salt Ban Alert:

Hard choice on water softeners
Dixon City Council is studying the possible ban on salt-based systems.

It turns out that the voters in Dixon, California overturned an effort to raise their taxes to fund an expansion at the wastewater plant. The expansion was to handle the ever increasing salinity level of their treated wastewater discharge. When they refused to pony up more taxes, that put the city out of compliance with state guidelines for salinity levels in treated waste discharge, and that got the state of California breathing down the necks of the Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board, who, in turn, started breathing down the necks of the City of Dixon to come up with a solution. You know how it is, poorly treated waste rolls downhill.

So it continued to roll downhill until it plopped into the laps of the Dixon Wastewater Project Committee. They were tasked with coming up with ways that don’t cost the taxpayers any money but will still reduce the salinity level of their wastewater. And it occurred to them, “What if we stopped putting salt in the water? Do you think that might help?”

At that point, someone pointed out that it seems to have done the trick over in Santa Clarita, and so the committee came back to the city council with three proposals that pretty much read:

1. Get rid of salt based water softeners.
2. Teach people how to get rid of salt based water softeners.
3. Study the long term effects of getting rid of salt based water softeners.

And we all know what happens next, right? If Santa Clarita is any indicator, in about two and a half years, they’ll come back and say;

1. Get rid of swimming pool salt pool chlorine generators.
2. Teach people how to get rid of salt pool chlorine generators.
3. Study the long term effects of getting rid of salt pool chlorine generators.

But it might be sooner, because since I have Google Alerts, I was able to see that story the day it published and send a blizzard of links to everybody in Dixon who’s e-mail I could find to tell them that they ought to just go ahead and throw salt pools in there while they’re thinking about banning salty stuff.

Isn’t networking Neat?

And I know, I know. I can already hear the Salt Is Great Amen Choir reciting the California building code that backwash lines for pools aren’t hooked to the sewer so they’re not technically increasing the salinity of the waste stream, because it just spews onto the ground, and anybody who keeps up with the Breaking News at some of the more popular internet pool forums knows that “unless your soil already has very high salt concentrations or you are growing the very most tempermental [sic] plants in the world SWG pool water will be just fine for watering plants for years and years…”, to which another Living Online Instead of In the Real World forum regular adds, “Our deck-o-drain drains out to the side of our [pool] directly into a small flower bed. Out of all our new plants, it is probably doing the best, so you'd be hard pressed to convince me that a little low salinity water is bad for plants - let alone 'toxic waste' ".

And that, my friends, is the state of the Salt Pool Biz on the Internet. The consumer is faced with either going to the manufacturer’s website, where the lies are so thick you can cut them with a knife, or going to these forums, which so much resemble a bunch of guys sitting around the garage, drinking beer, pulling each other’s fingers and convincing each other that salt's okay. One of them recommends that everybody water their plants "for years and years" with salt water, and another thinks that the salty water is helping his plants. If anybody with any real knowledge of agriculture were walking by when they said it, they would laugh themselves silly and tell them that is such a load of... poorly treated waste. But then, they wouldn’t be invited to the next finger pulling contest.

And really, what do I know? I just read facts that are printed in silly old newspapers and dumb old research journals and b-o-r-i-n-g professional waste water management publications. It’s not like I KNOW anything, like these guys at the forums who got solid C’s in chemistry and earth science in school, or the Salt Reps, who are really your friends and would never tell you a lie for something as base as a wad of greasy cash.

What the heck, though. Here’s some more of those dumb old facts about salt ruining drinking water:

Too much salt in New Jersey's water?

“United Water company has been sending notices out to its customers in Bergen and Hudson counties warning that the sodium level in the water supply is higher than it should be.

The company blames the winter task of salting the roads to keep them clear of ice.

The salt and snow melt from the roads spilled into reservoirs, taking the concentration of sodium higher than state guidelines -- and the water processing can't flush it out.

But the company is required to put out the warning for people with high blood pressure or other high sodium sensitive health concerns. It advises them to talk to their doctors.”

So now you’re advised to talk to your doctor before you drink the water in Jersey because of salt. Of all the things I thought you’d have to worry about drinking Jersey water, salt was pretty far down on the list. But there it is.

And on the off chance that you’re brain damaged and you don’t readily see the connection between salt on the roads and salt pools… It’s all salt. Salt pools are elective. They’re not mandatory. Why would you be part of the problem when you can be part of the solution?

This also dovetails nicely into why it’s not okay to blow your salty backwash onto the ground as if you needed to be told fer-Chrissakes…

Deep breaths…. Counting to ten… Okay... Better now.

But my favorite little tidbit to come my way via my Google Alerts is this one. It’s a thread on the Water Technology Bulletin Board. Click it and read through it a couple of times to get the drift of what they’re talking about. I’ll give you the synopsis, but don’t trust me. Go read it for yourself.

This guy named Dirkson is asking a bunch of Real Water Experts to respond with their approach to solving a water quality issue. Now, these are people who make a living working with the technologies that make your water drinkable. They are not like your local Salt Reps who make a living by making your water undrinkable, or people who post on pool forums who, for the most part, just own a pool and do something else besides know anything about water for a day job. The water quality issue was providing about 1,000 gallons per week with a source water that had a hardness of about 3800 ppm and a salinity of about 2100 ppm. Your salt pool water has nearly double that salinty.

The thread quickly becomes defined as RE: Brackish Water Treatment by the responders, and, as we all know, brackish is defined as salty tasting. So they’re all keying on the high salinity, which like I said, is only a little more than half what your salt pool water is.

The first responder says, “There is NO EASY ANSWER. That is why no one is responding to your post”, and he goes on to recommend solar stills because the energy costs to reclaim that water would be too high.

The next responder says, sure, it can be treated. System cost for 500 gallons per day would be about $10,000. That would just about cover Mom and Dad and the three kids, each averaging about 100 gallons of water a day (that’s the US average).

The next couple responders point out that even at the $10,000 mark, there’s a problem with all that salinity. Using RO and water softeners to reclaim the water creates a brine discharge problem.

“Even worse where do you get rid of all the brine from the regenerations? I would never want to allow it to be dispersed on the land. Especially, if the land is above a water table. “

But, gosh, the Pool Gurus on the pool forums said that it was good for plants and stuff. Said I could blow it all over the ground for years and years. You mean to tell me that they were wrong? You mean to tell me that… their opinion was just… an opinion? I am crushed.

Of course, the folks who make a living creating polluted pool water – that is, after all, what 3,500 ppm salt water is; polluted water that needs treatment according to EVERYBODY IN WASTEWATER MANAGEMENT – the same folks who want to keep selling you salt systems will say that this is all just those guy’s opinions. But their opinions coincide with legislation that keeps popping up all over the country about how our excessive use of salt is causing increasing costs in waste water reclamation.

So, if you’re one of those Red State Republicans who hates new taxes, the way all good Republicans are supposed to, and you just happen to have a salt system on your pool, remember that you can’t vote NO when your municipality comes hat in hand asking for more money to desalinate the waste water. Unless, of course, you want them to legislate your salt pool out of existence. Because that would logically be next. Like in Santa Clarita, and perhaps soon to come in Dixon, and perhaps coming to a municipality near you soon.

There’s just one more little factoid I want to pass along that I found out there in cyberspace this week. It’s kind of a good fit to put the lie to the Other Guy’s baloney that they’re big companies and they know what’s best for you, and that, at the very least, they certainly know better than some dumb old pool cleaner in Dallas, Texas.

In 1957, the Ford Motor Company (pretty big company, wouldn’t you say?) unveiled a concept car, called the Nucleon. Then, again in 1962, they came to the Seattle World’s Fair with another concept car they called the Ford Seattle-ite XXI. The Nucleon and especially the Seatlle-ite XXI were cars designed for the 21st century, when everybody would own several small nuclear reactors to fuel their energy needs. Both cars were envisioned to be powered by a slightly larger version of the reactor that powers your lawnmower and your kid’s jet bike.

What? You say you don’t have a nuclear fueled lawnmower and your kid is still pedaling around the neighborhood?

But you have salt in your pool water? Who have you been listening to?

It’s A Good News, Bad News Kinda Thing

I read some really good news this week. The State of California, in their drive to lead the way on environmental issues, has passed into law a recommendation to the state’s Water Quality Control Boards to ban all saline discharge to groundwater or waste water.

What was that sound I just heard? A collective gasp from the Salt Is Great Amen Choir?

Yes, read all about it, right here:

http://www.watertechonline.com/news.asp?mode=4&N_ID=66916

The gist is that the State of California has enacted a recommendation that encourages their nine California Water Quality Control Boards to ban all discharges of saline to groundwater or waste water.

I know. I just said that in the first paragraph. But I thought it beared repeating. Because if you stop all discharge of salty water to groundwater, then you guys out there in California can’t blow your salty backwash down into the canyons any more. That would be saline discharge into groundwater. And if you’re backwash is hooked to the sewer, you can’t backwash it there, either. That would be saline discharge to waste water. In fact, you won’t be able to dump a salt pool anywhere. Ever. Because there’s no provision for it’s disposal. There’s now a rule, slated to go into effect next year, that says you can’t introduce saline discharge into groundwater or waste water.

I know. I keep saying it. NO SALINE DISCHARGE INTO GROUNDWATER OR WASTE WATER. I’m even giggling as I write it. It is so cool.

With the stroke of a single pen, with a one-sentence recommendation, the State of California Water Quality Control Board, part of CAL/EPA, has banned the use of salt water based chlorine generators. Unless, of course, you have a cartridge filter and you plan on drinking your pool the next time it needs replastering.

This, by the way is a different group than the Los Angeles County Sanitation District who enacted the Santa Clarita salt water softener ban and salt water swimming pool ban.

http://www.lacsd.org/info/industrial_waste/chloride_in_santa_clarita/saltwaterpool.asp

So, you see, that’s the second government agency in the State of California tasked with monitoring the state of the environment that is saying that salt in our waste water is a BAD THING.

On the one hand, you have government agencies who monitor water quality and see a growing problem with higher and higher levels of chloride in our rivers, lakes and reservoirs, and they’re recommending banning saline discharge to reverse that trend.

On the other hand, you have companies whose bottom line will be impacted by the prohibition on saline discharge, and they’re telling us to trust them, that they know best, and that we shouldn’t worry about saline discharge, that it’ll be okay. Gosh, just look at Australia. It is such a shining example of a country that’s been using salt in their pools and water softeners for over twenty years with no ill effects.

Is that true? I’ve always wondered if what we read in our trade publications about the situation in Australia is as rosy as they make it out to be. Or is it that in those interviews they’re only asking the Salt Peddlers in Australia how things are going. But that’s the great thing about Google and the internet. It gives you an opportunity to do an end-run on the sound bite folks and find out what the pointy-head guv guys are saying. Here’s what I found when I Googled “salinity of drinking water in Australia”.

http://www.nrm.gov.au/publications/salinity/index.html

“Australia has critical salinity and water quality problems which are receiving urgent attention.”


http://www.abc.net.au/water/stories/s1572428.htm

“Across Australia, 80 wetlands are already suffering the effects of salinity. The number is predicted to rise to 130 by the year 2050. The build-up of salts puts many species of plants and animals at risk, and will eventually reduce biodiversity in the affected regions. Drinking water supplies, particularly in South Australia and New South Wales, are also under threat from salinity. For example, Adelaide's drinking water is predicted to exceed World Health Organisation guidelines for salinity on two days out of five by the year 2020 if nothing is done to control salinity in the River Murray.”


http://www.napswq.gov.au/publications/salinity.html

“More than $130 million of agricultural production is lost annually from salinity. More than $6 million is spent every year on building maintenance related to salinity in South Australia. Salinity causes $9 million damage annually to roads and highways in south-west New South Wales. The area of salt affected land in Western Australia is increasing at a rate of one football field per hour.”


http://www.waterquality.crc.org.au/programs/program3d/pg2006/sustainable_epidemiology.doc
“Impacts from salinisation have been identified as one of Australia's most serious environmental issues. Accumulation of dissolved salts within the soil profile may lead to salination of adjacent freshwater ecosystems.”


These were all on the first page of results. I didn’t go digging ten pages back to find them. These are the ones that jump right out at you off the first page. It literally took me five minutes to find those references. Take note, too, that they’re all from government agencies, from the folks tasked with protecting, or at least salvaging, the environment.

Now, in all fairness, Australia didn’t get where they are today by people dumping their salt pools and discharging their salt water softeners. They got there through a mechanism of over-irrigation, which percolates a layer of salt already deep in the soil to the surface and raises the levels of the even deeper aquifers so that the salt in that higher strata contaminates the whole aquifer. But if that’s the situation, isn’t dumping a salt pool or discharging a salt water softener kinda like throwing gas on a fire?

Anyway, that’s the Good News. Help is on the way and if the recommendation is acted upon by the California Regional Water Quality Boards, then salt systems in California could be a thing of the past.

The Bad News is that this recommendation is about a year away from being enacted. That’s more than enough time for the Special Interests to get their lobbyists in there, pressing the flesh and doling out the dollars to see that single sentence amended out of existence. And it’s not just the salt/chlorine gobs who will be working to defeat it. It’s the whole Water Quality Industry (read salt based water softener peddlers) who will be gunning for it.

It’s just going to depend on the strength and influence of the pointy-head guv guys who did the hard work of monitoring the situation all these years to come to the conclusion that this was the answer. They’re the ones who got that sentence added in the first place. I assume it’s them, anyway. I’m not naive, though. I realize it could also be the Something Besides Salt To Soften Your Water folks. But what’s that old saying?

The Enemy of My Enemy is My Friend.

Salt belongs in the shaker. Not in the pool.

I've had it up to here (imagine me reaching about a foot over my head) with these manufacturers telling us what a boon to the pool biz these salt systems are.

Hello? Has anyone noticed what it does to limestone? Travertine? Sandstone? Concrete? Diving board stands? Stainless steel filter tanks? Those little brass handles on the skimmer baskets? Brass pencil jets?

Has anyone noticed how the stainless steel teeth on Polaris 280 drive shafts are eaten down to rusty little nubs in salt pools but not in tablet pools?

Has anyone noticed how filter tank warranties have gone from the typical ten year full or prorated to one year?

Has anyone noticed how every time it rains, if your pool has a tile line drain, your humping salt out to all your pools the next week? Where do you think that salt’s going? But more about that later.

The really hard part to swallow is that the manufacturers aren't admitting any of these problems exist. One time, I asked a manufacturer's rep why didn't he at least tell builders they ought not to sell a salt system on certain pools. We were standing in one of my customer's backyards, looking at one year old decomposing limestone coping at the time.

And this is what he said:

"How can I tell them not to sell a salt system when I don't believe that salt caused this damage. You see, salt is only corrosive at levels above six thousand parts per million and our system only uses around three thousand parts per million. So, to my way of thinking, it's impossible that salty water caused this damage."

I said to him, "We recently discovered this phenomenon that we call evaporation, wherein water, splashed out of a pool onto, say, limestone coping, will actually disappear, leaving it's mineral content behind. Now, we suspect the Sun is the culprit, as the rate of this phenomenon seems to decrease when the Sun Chariot goes behind the hills beyond the edge of town for the night. In the Olden Days, when the magical evaporation occurred, the worst thing we ever saw as a result of the minerals left behind was a chalky white calcium stain.

"But then, we added salt to the mix, and after the water evaporates, the three thousand parts per million salt level is magically transformed to one million parts per million, slightly in excess of the six thousand parts per million you say we need to damage the stone am I going slow enough I realize you're a salesman and so can only speak and not listen but perhaps you can read my lips or think about something besides dollar signs and I've always wondered how do you people lay your head down and sleep at night and what's it like to tell lies for a living and did it ever occur to you to put a moments thought into the handy answers your company feeds you to overcome sales resistance and customer dissatisfaction when a year after your product is installed it's caused upwards of ten thousand dollars worth of damage to a sixty thousand dollar swimming pool and don't you have a decent bone in your body or even a hint of a sense of responsibility to the homeowners, or failing that, to the builders you conned into selling these Trojan Horses along with their otherwise beautiful custom built pools?"

And he smiled and slapped me on the back and said, "Hey, I'm really glad we were able to get together today and brainstorm about this problem your customer is having. It's always such a pleasure talking to you and I'm so glad I was able to come here today and make a difference. Come on and follow me out to my truck. I want to give you some free parts to shut... I mean, to show my appreciation for choosing our products for your customers and to give you some of our brochures about the exciting things we have planned for next season. Real win-win products, because they’re great profit centers for you, and, just like that salt system, wonderful new inventions guaranteed to enhance your customers swimming experience. Like the jagged glass ring toss game that we’re test marketing for next year. I’d like to give you a couple to pass on to some of your better customers...”

Now, I’m just a pool cleaner and repairman. I don’t have the advanced degree in basket weaving or canoeing that is required to even fill out an application for a sales job at most of the Big Three pool manufacturers. But I got tired of watching my pools fall apart and listening to sales reps tell me that the only problem here is that I’m a child of the sixties and, well... you know.

So, I started doing a little research into the possibility that someone out there just might know some of the reasons why I was seeing such heavy damage to so many of my salt pools.

I was bowled over by what a night of Googling revealed.

For example, did you know that:

“Over the past 60 years, concrete infrastructure in cold climates has deteriorated by ‘salt scaling,’ which is superficial damage that occurs during freezing in the presence of saline water. It reduces mechanical integrity and necessitates expensive repair or replacement. The phenomenon can be demonstrated by pooling a solution on a block of concrete and subjecting it to freeze/thaw cycles. The most remarkable feature of salt scaling is that the damage is absent if the pool contains pure water...(and that) ...salt scaling is a consequence of the fracture behavior of ice. The stress arises from thermal expansion mismatch between ice and concrete, which puts the ice in tension as the temperature drops. Considering the mechanical and viscoelastic properties of ice, it is shown that this mismatch will not cause pure ice to crack, but moderately concentrated solutions are expected to crack. Cracks in the brine ice penetrate into the substrate, resulting in superficial damage.”

http://www.ingentaconnect.com/search/article?title=Salt+damage&title_type=tka&year_from=1998&year_to=2006&database=1&pageSize=20&index=17

Oh.... so that’s why the stamped concrete around my customer’s eight pencil jet water features is deteriorating. You see, the first winter after the pool was built, the freeze guard was running the water feature pump every time we got a cold snap. Then, the wind would blow a little bit of the water onto the deck, where it would pool around the base of the brass pencil jets, penetrate the more lightly coated stamped concrete there and cause the damage just like the damage cited in the research study.

On the one hand, I’m just a pool cleaner. I’m sure the builder and the salt system manufacturer thought about all that beforehand and I’m just hallucinating again. And, of course, I have an axe to grind with the builder and manufacturer for screwing my customers like stump-tied sheep. I admit. I’m biased.

On the other hand, the scientists, Dr Scherer and Dr. Valenza, the guys who wrote this research article for The Journal of the American Ceramic Society, have some pretty hefty credentials. Like the Princeton Institute for the Science & Technology of Materials, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Princeton, New Jersey.

Gosh... who should I believe? The guys with the degrees in basket weaving - with a minor in business, of course - or the scientists from Princeton?

Then there’s the article titled “Salt-induced decay in calcareous stone monuments and buildings in a marine environment in SW France”, by a group of six scientists from universities and institutes from Antwerp to Athens to La Rochele, France. The research article matter-of-factly states that “salt-induced deterioration of architectural heritage is considered to be accelerated drastically in marine environments”.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6V2G-47GY6FP-2&_coverDate=04%2F30%2F2003&_alid=463004100&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_qd=1&_cdi=5702&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=85c8a8122b9ddf50f40d10d1708134f2

Hmmm... decaying stone... salt-induced... marine environment... What could they be saying? It must be some secret language that only scientists can understand. Certainly the salt, or NaCl, that’s in these marine environments is wholly different from the salt, NaCl, that we dump into swimming pools.

I know. Let’s go to www.saltinstitute.org and ask them.

Wait... what’s this? There appears to be a photo on their home page of salt being harvested from sea water through solar evaporation. Hmmm... I wonder? Could it be that the salt system manufacturers forgot to mention fifty or sixty years of research that proves conclusively that salt hastens the destruction of stone and concrete structures?

But then there’s the article, “The evaluation of crystallization modifiers for controlling salt damage to limestone”.

Ahah! Herein lies hope. These are a couple of different science guys who are talking about adding something to the salt to “significantly affect the capillary passage of dilute and concentrated solutions of sodium chloride and sodium sulfate through columns of limestone.” In other words, reduce the damage of salt on limestone.

They clearly state that “sodium chloride passage through Monks Park limestone gave predominantly subflorescence with mild edge erosion while sodium sulfate mainly effloresced and severely damaged the stone column”.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6W6G-46MC6NV-8&_coverDate=09%2F30%2F2002&_alid=463204831&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_qd=1&_cdi=6598&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=4e06656a402303c85c8bd33fa4463c9d

So, the answer is easy. Just put this additive in with our salt... what is it this wonder additive? Oh, yes, potassium ferrocyanide... Hey, wait a minute. I read somewhere else that they’re already putting sodium ferrocyanide into most road salts and:

“under acidic conditions...this compound is known to break down, generating toxic cyanide forms, including hydrogen cyanide. These toxins appear to have caused serious fish kills as the result of sodium ferrocyanide’s use by the BC Ministry of Forests in fire retardants. Recent animal studies also have shown chronic cyanide exposure may be deleterious to liver and kidney functions and causes both time- and dose-dependent DNA fragmentation, accompanied by cytotoxicity.”

http://www.elements.nb.ca/theme/transportation/salt/salt.htm

Maybe not what you want your kids swimming around in, after all.

But while we’re on the subject of road salt:

“The corrosion and environmental costs pertinent to road salts amount up to at least $469 per ton on average, and they are often ignored in formulating highway winter maintenance strategies. The magnitude of such hidden costs is significant compared with the nominal cost of using road salts for snow and ice control...”

http://www.coe.montana.edu/wti/wwwshare/Corrosion/Highway_Winter_Mainteance_Asset_Management.pdf

A ton of road salt only cost about $75.00, or about 15% of that $469.00 a ton. The rest is infrastructure cost. Infrastructure like cars, roads, bridges, the environment. In the US we use about ten million tons of road salt per year. Do the math. That’s $4,690,000,000 a year. If you subtract out the cost of the salt, that means that $3,940,000,000 damage results from road salt.

But I’m sure it won’t hurt your pool, or your coping, or your deck, or your metal water features, or your stainless steel filter tank, or your diving board stand, or the ground around your swimming pool. You see, my salt system salesman told me so. And you can take that to the bank. After all, he did.

Then I read:

“Sodium exchanges easily with calcium and magnesium in soil, as well as other nutrients needed for soil fertility. This process destroys soil structure and fertility. Long-term salt accumulation can cause high soil density and low permeability, which adversely affects plant growth and erosion control.”

http://sci.cfans.umn.edu/StudProj/5061Mangold.pdf

You know, that's how water softeners work. They leach the calcium and magnesium out of your water and replace it with sodium. Isn't that great?

Also, think about sodium's effect on your soil the next time you do a cannon ball into the pool. What’s all that salt in the splash water doing to the flower beds? To the grass? To the trees?

Funny story here. Unfortunately, not funny haha. Funny like I wished I could have crawled into a hole when it happened.

Imagine you’re looking out a huge picture window. In the foreground, there’s a beautiful negative edge pool. The edge of the pool appears to waterfall over onto a tree covered hillside gently sloping away from you. There are several trees on this hillside, but the largest and oldest, a huge pecan tree, is smack in the middle of your view, as if this whole project, this whole house and pool and terraces were built centered on that tree’s magnificent canopy.

They were.

The water in the negative edge pool doesn’t really flow down the hillside. That’s the illusion. It drops into a trough about six feet below the edge of the pool. That’s where the auto water fill for the pool is installed. When the negative edge pump turns on, it pump water up from the trough, overfilling the pool and creating that illusion. The auto water fill kicks on as the trough drains to make up for any water lost since the last time the negative edge pump was run.

Now, add a salt system. Everything’s fine - except for the water splashed as it falls from the pool into the trough that’s impregnating the ground around the trough with salty water so that no grass grows. But other than that, everything’s fine.

Then the auto water fill gets stuck open. Now the trough overflows. The pool keeps waterfalling salty water into the trough so the water running down the hill has a slowly decreasing saline content. This is about a 40,000 gallon pool, so that’s quite a bit of salty water. If you just poured the undiluted salt granules onto the hillside it would be 1,334 lbs. of salt. Say that to yourself slowly. One thousand three hundred thirty four pounds of salt. Nearly twenty-seven 50 lbs. bags.

But we weren't pouring undiluted salt granules onto the hillside. We were giving the salt the single mechanism it needed to penetrate the ground and saturate the roots of that beautiful pecan tree. We gave the salt water.

Yes. That salt pool killed that magnificent pecan tree. That’s what the arborist said, anyway. He didn’t even know that you could chlorinate a pool with salt when he rendered his opinion, and was pretty well baffled by the idea that a mighty pecan had been felled by salt in Dallas, Texas, several hundred miles from the nearest marine environment and about that far again from any salted winter roads.

That was my first clue that maybe there were going to be “issues” with salt systems.

Think about a good hard rain. You know, the ones where your weatherman says you got a couple or three inches of rain in twenty-four hours. And the pool never overflows because the builder’s a sharp guy who installs tile line drains in all his pools.

Wherever that tile line drain comes out just got about 1,000 gallons of salty water, or about 35 lbs. of salt.

There are so many studies that show significant damage to trees and shrubs and soil from salt. Just google salt damage and plants or trees or soil and you’ll see hundreds of returns of university studies, federal state and local studies, environmental legislation, and more and more and more, all dealing with the down side of too much salt.

If that’s not enough, here’s another one:

http://www.lacsd.org/chloride/default.asp?cid=1

The Santa Clarita Valley Sanitation district became concerned because the salinity of the water rose from 129 milligrams per liter in 1997 to 168 milligrams per liter in 2001. The 129 was already far in excess of the 100 milligrams per liter maximum established by the state of California.

The main culprit of this additional salinity was traced back to water softening systems installed in less than 10% of the homes in the water district. So, they banned water softening systems.

Then in November, 2005 they banned any saltwater pools that were connected to the sewer system. In other words, any system that backwashes to the sewer. Salt systems require between 3 and 4 grams per liter to operate. That’s 3,000 to 4,000 milligrams per liter, or thirty to forty times the maximum established by the state of California for potable water. So, you can see why they were concerned.

http://www.lacsd.org/chloride/default.asp?cid=44

Now, if they passed that law here in Dallas, Texas, just about every pool with a DE or sand filter would be affected. Because they’re all supposed to be plumbed to the sewer to meet code. In California, though, they’re not required to be plumbed to the sewer. At least according to this guy:

http://www.castaicpools.com/article6.htm

This guy, Harry Clay, isn’t worried about the amount of chloride in the water supply. He’s worried about being able to keep selling them salt systems. And I quote; “With no previous discussion, or input from the swimming pool industry, [editor's comment: industry input? Isn’t that kind of like asking Enron to help the government establish energy policy? Oh, wait a minute. They already did that.] this controversial bombshell caused quite a bit of shock among builders, manufacturers, & salt water pool owners for a few days, until the legs were cut off this ill advised ordinance. The key words to this poorly thought out ruling are ‘Pools connected to the sewer system’. Virtually no pools have been built in Santa Clarita that are in fact, connected to the sewer system.”

You see, Harry’s proud of the fact that in California, they can spray their backwash effluent directly onto the ground. Even though the research shows that “long-term salt accumulation can cause high soil density and low permeability, which adversely affects plant growth and erosion control”.

Because, truth is, most backwash hoses get rolled out to the same spot every time they’re used. So that salty water gets deposited in the same spot every time the pool is backwashed. Too, since they don’t have to plumb to the sewer, they drain pools pretty much wherever they want to out there, depositing anywhere from 500 to 1,000 lbs of salt onto the soil at the end of that drain hose.

Even if they put that hose in a storm sewer, it eventually ends up flushing into a creek or a river, which in turn damages vegetation and the soil.

But Harry’s only concern about putting the salty water in the storm drain is that “storm drains do not run thru the sewer system & are not under the jurisdiction of the Sanitation District”.

Pretty much Harry’s real concern about this “ill advised ordinance” seems to be finding a way to cut the legs off of it, so he can keep selling them salt systems. After all, why should he give a rip about his neighbor’s water quality when there’s money to be made? And besides, he's successful. He and his customers can easily afford the $500 a month water bills the Santa Clarita Water District is predicting if they have to update their equipment to remove the ever increasing levels of sodium in the water. The folks who might have trouble ponying up that much each month aren't in his customer base, anyway.

And I think that’s the thing that bothers me the most about these salt systems. There’s lots and lots of Harry’s out there. Guys who are more than happy to spread misinformation about salt systems for the few bucks they make when they sell them. Misinformation like, “the owners of the technologically superior Salt Water / Saline purified pools don’t flush or backwash their pools nearly to the degree that owners of older pools with the old fashioned chlorine floaters do”.

Honestly, have you ever read anything more ridiculous in your life? No? Then read this; “With the newer Salt Water Purification Systems, we’re using Electrolysis to Oxidize combined chloride molecules & to kill algae & bacteria.”

It’s pretty clear that old Harry doesn’t even know how salt systems work, or when to capitalize in a sentence. He’s turned electrolysis into a sanitizer, instead of what it is in this case; the mechanism that turns a chloride ion into chlorine gas, which dissolves in the water to form hypochlorous acid, the killing form of chlorine.

And the other thing that bothers me is that after all the years of manufacturers and builders ignoring the down side of these salt systems, they continue to stonewall and obfuscate, even as these chickens come home to roost on each and every one of us, as we try to explain to our customer why their pool is falling apart so much faster than their neighbor's pool who doesn’t have a salt system.

Because you already know what the manufacturer and the pool builder are going to say, don’t you?

“It must be your poolman’s fault.”