Pool chlorinator

Ours is a Chloromatic ESC-16. It's supposted to be a no clean type.

It has 3 connections - 2 to the electrodes/plates, the 3rd is a sense electrode - a stainless bolt head. The bolt head is between where the electrodes entedr/exit the housing and is on the upstream side. The electrode connection metal work is insulated from the water until it enters the plate assembly. It seems to work in an on/off fashion with the control adjusting the duty cycle - ie run for x minutes, off for y minutes.

On Sat, 4 Nov 2006 16:45:39 +1100, "Trevor Wilson" put finger to keyboard and composed:

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You *may* have trouble with the gas sensor. AIUI, the chlorinator must sense a current between the gas sensor electrode and one of its primary current carrying electrodes. An absence of current means that the sensor is uncovered and probably enveloped in hydrogen, which in turn means that the chlorinator will not turn on. I'd verify whether the sensing circuit is polarity sensitive, and if so, I'd switch it as well. Some time ago I reverse engineered a chlorinator of this type. If I can find the circuits I'll email them to you.

- Franc Zabkar

--=20 Please remove one 'i' from my address when replying by email.

You *may* have trouble with the gas sensor. AIUI, the chlorinator must sense a current between the gas sensor electrode and one of its primary current carrying electrodes. An absence of current means that the sensor is uncovered and probably enveloped in hydrogen, which in turn means that the chlorinator will not turn on. I'd verify whether the sensing circuit is polarity sensitive, and if so, I'd switch it as well. Some time ago I reverse engineered a chlorinator of this type. If I can find the circuits I'll email them to you.

**Thanks Franc. I note that the top of the line Saltmate also has an extra 'electrode'. I suspect you are correct and that it is some kind of sensor.

--
Trevor Wilson
www.rageaudio.com.au

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Why should it matter if the electrodes are uncovered? Is it for fear of accidental sparking setting off hydrogen that might be there?

Or maybe to stop the build up of a pocket of chlorine gas? Very nasty stuff to breathe.

Check out directpoolsupplies.com.au

my 2 cents worth... When I looked in to doing the same sorter thing with my unit, I found due to the special coatings on the "Cell" (to make it more efficient) when reversing the polarity it reduced the current flow to a level that made the idea not workable.

My research lead me to the understanding (of the auto cleaner type) that they use a different type of cell. As I had just paid for a new one - it was not practical for me to look into this further.

With my experience I located and use a salt supply that doesn't leave as much on the plates and I don't run the cell for a day or so after putting in the salt.

But it is still about once a month for me, and I found it's best to dilute the acid a bit - to "save" the coating on the cell.

Jeff

A better system has been developed by a friend of mine in Darwin at a company called Aquatreat. Unfortunately there is no internet information, but he changed our salt chlorinator system for one of his, which I think ran on some type of copper galvanic process (spelling?) The system had the advantage of NEVER needing salt descaling, cause it did not use salt and did not make chlorine. The water was so clean that the tree frogs used it for laying eggs in (pity the filter system got most of them if we didn't fish them out). It is a brilliant system. but i don't know whether anyone in the southern states knows about or sells it. It's quite amazing what swimming in water free of chlorine and salt is like! If you are interested, ring them on 08 89472343.

(just a holding page)

Rod

I worked on a product similar to this many years ago. I left the company because I got nervous about how much copper the system actually put into the water.

IT basically uses 2 copper electrodes (might have a small silver content, but I am not sure) and deposited copper in the water. In very small amounts, copper is fine ( think the body needs it), but it is poisonous in large amounts. IF one has a chlorinator of this type which purposely deposits copper into the water then it is wise to have the copper content of the water tested regularly.

Something similar to this system?

**Thanks for all the responses. I contacted Saltmate (something I should have done first) and found them to be very helpful. Of course Saltmate suggested that my idea of reversing the Voltage at the plates was an over-simplification and that their system was a good deal more complex and sophisticated (I expected a response such as this), but that the real problem was the electrodes themselves. Apparently, they're constructed from a titanium base material, coated with platinum. My electrodes have a standard coating on the cathodes and a 6 X thickness coating on the anodes. The self cleaning electrodes have a 6 X coationg on both sets of electrodes (makes sense). The cost of the cell (the part with the electrodes in it) is around $800.00! Fabricating titanium electrodes is well beyond my abilities. I don't even want to think about platinum plating.

--
Trevor Wilson
www.rageaudio.com.au

Copper/silver ionizers have been used in pools for decades, and they do help in controlling algae (copper is an algaecide). You can also buy copper additives that are very effective, though the copper precipitates out as bicarbonate within a week or so - hence continual replacement by an ionizer is effective. Copper discolours some fabrics and hair BTW.

There is a number of other non-chlorine algaecides, various amines and quaternary ammonium ones: rosin amine D-acetate, cetyl trimethyl ammonium bromide lauryl pyridium chloride, etc.

With any of them, you still need chlorine anyhow, as they, like copper, don't control bacteria.

The bad smell of a public pool isn't typically chlorine, but chloramines, which are caused by a buildup of body wastes (urine mainly) which break down to ammonia compounds.

I have a pretty comprehensive document from the CSIRO about pool water treatment here. The product manufacturers stuff is all pretty biassed and unscientific IME. The CSIRO document is really good!

The important point in maintaining effective sterilization with minimal chlorine content is to keep the TDS (total dissolved solids) down to the minimum required for pH buffering, plus maybe a bit of isocyanurate stabiliser. All non-carbonate ionic content does is lock up chlorine so it's effectively unavailable. We recently had to fix our pool which had reached 5000ppm TDS, when it should be maybe 300ppm, due to us not wasting enough water through backwashing!

Clifford Heath.