Steps to follow to start a salt system

If you use a salt system to sanitize your pool, the water must be at about 65 F° for the cell to produce chlorine. At the beginning of the season, especially, when the pool water is still cold, ensure you always have chlorine in stock, including chlorinating granules to keep your water clean and sanitized. 

When the water is warm enough, you can start your salt system and the chlorine production. To produce the right amount of chlorine, you need to add the right amount of salt to the pool. 

So, what should you do at the beginning of the season? First, you need to know the amount of residual salt from the previous year. To do so, use a sterile container to bring a water sample to the store for testing. Knowing the volume of water or your pool size will help determine how many bags of salt you need. 

To ensure optimal operation, it’s best to start the season with a clean cell. We recommend that you clean it at the end of the previous season. If you haven’t done so, you can do it with a cell cleaning stand and liquid cleaner. 

When you are ready to produce chlorine, add your salt bags. It is very important to turn off your system and ensure it’s not on when you add the products to the pool. Before turning the salt system back on after adding the salt, you should wait at least 12 hours. 

It will take an additional 12 hours before you can get an accurate reading of the amount of salt in the pool. At that point, the production will have started, and you’ll need to regularly monitor your chlorine level with a drop test or test strips as the production will need to be adjusted. 

The small switch on the front of your salt system’s box works like a timer. For example, if you set it to 50%, the system will produce chlorine 50% of the time it’s running. So, if the chlorine level is too high, you’ll decrease the percentage of production a little bit, if it’s too low, you’ll increase it a bit to find the right recipe for an ideal level of chlorine during the whole season.