Day by day, saltwater pools are getting more popular among recent pool owners and frequent pool users. Swimming in these pools won’t make you compromise with the softness of your hair or skin. You won’t get any itchy eyes. It will also cut down your pool chemical expenses.
Due to all these benefits, saltwater pools are growing so rapidly in different regions.
But there are some legit confusions that you need to resolve first, like what pool salt you need to add, how much amount of it to use and why. Here’s the complete guide for you to answer all these queries.
Pool salt vs. Regular salt
The salt being used in your pool is chemically the same salt that you use to sprinkle while frying. The pool salt is even more pure salt in an ideal condition. You can’t iodize this salt just like any table salt. Compared with regular salt, pool salt is a larger or coarser grind. It works better in Bromine and Chlorine generators. Most pool salts are 99.8% pure in nature. They also don’t have any clumping agents. You need to purchase pool salt in bulk as well, unlike regular salt.
Reasons for using pool salt
The main purpose of using pool salt is to sanitize the pool water. Only the pool salt isn’t capable of completing this water sanitization process. You would need an additional device as well named saltwater chlorinator. This device uses an electrolysis process to make chlorine and sodium ion separated from the pool water, which is basically a sodium chloride solution. Thus, the sanitization process takes place.
Types of pool salt being used
Salt can be a diversified mineral that varies depending upon the chemical proportion and bonding variety. They have differences mainly in their production process. Depending on it, the relative price and efficiency of the change.
Solar salt
The name might make you feel like something coming down from space, right? But the thing isn’t like this. This type of salt comes with a name like this because the sun helps it in production. The process involves seawater that is placed in open space so that it can perfectly be exposed to the sunray and adequate wind. Due to this, seawater starts evaporating. The vapor moves up, leaving behind the salt. This process is almost nothing to cause you much expense. It’s a very simple natural one to follow.
This process comes with a downside as well. Seawater contains a huge number of bacteria and also millions of tiniest creature-brine shrimps into it. After the evaporation process, this huge size creates an unbelievable number of impurities in the remaining salty solution. The more you take the saltwater to evaporate, the higher the number of impurities will be.
As the evaporation goes on with time, the salt level density increases, and it eventually kills all the teeny tiny brine shrimp. Thus, your solar pool salt might carry lots of dead shrimp particles. Again, the bacteria being contained by the water also get killed due to the higher density salt environment. Then, you’ve to deal with added organic impurities. It’ll be a huge pressure for your pool filter and chlorinator.
Mechanical salt
The process of making mechanical salt is very much similar to the natural one where solar salt is produced. The only difference is here you’d need to arrange an artificial heating source instead of the sun. You can control the level of heating, and thus by increasing it, you can kill the bacteria and tiny brine shrimp. You can get rid of the impurities as well.
But despite this, there are some inorganic impurities like Magnesium, Copper, Iron, Silicates, Nitrates, and Phosphates in this kind of pool salt. The amount of these chemical impurities depends on the source of water from which it’s fetched.
Not all of these impurities can create trouble. Some of them, for say, Calcium, can have a negative effect on your pool chlorinator, filter and other equipment. Silicates can make the pool filthy. Your filter needs to filter out all of these impurities for you.
Mined salt
As the name suggests, mined salt comes from the mines. It’s also known better as rock salts. It’s the most common one found in nature and also the purest form of all salts. The purity varies in the range between 95 to 99% in most cases.
Undoubtedly, the most convenient and effective pool salt is the mined one. Solar salt might be a cheap option, but not a good one due to its impurity. Mechanically evaporated salt is OK but requires more work. Comparatively, mined salt is the perfect pool salt to use in your saltwater pool.
Bottom Line
If you ask me, I’ll tell you to go to a salty pool for sure. Considering every aspect, I do think that saltwater pools are here to stay. Many users are converting their regular pools to saltwater ones frequently in recent times. But, knowing the right type of pool salt is a must before deciding to replace your current pool with a saltwater one. If you really don’t want to go through all of these hassles, just look for the salt that’s labeled as “pool salt.” That’s it.