Oh man, I just found this on the website of a purveyor of salt pool systems:
"What makes the ******* Salt Purification System, by ********, the best choice for your pool? It’s salt…it’s natural… There are no harsh chemicals, nothing damaging to you, your children, or your pool. Salt is also environmentally and ecologically friendly."
How can they actually get away with saying stuff like that?
First of all, salt pools are CHLORINE pools. Nice use of the phrase "purification system", but the reality is that every salt system uses salt to produce CHLORINE. So all you people out there who smugly say - "oh, I have a salt pool", when other pool owners complain about chlorine...hello, you have a chlorine pool, too! Less chlorine, but still chlorine, and the same toxic by-products that come with it. "No harsh chemicals?" What the heck would you call CHLORINE?
Second, for all you people who doubt that salt pool systems damage pools and equipment, I have never found a more thorough investigation into the salt pool issue than this blogger, The Pool Guy. He has pictures and explanations and links and as much information as you care to digest about why and how salt pools harm your pool, your pool equipment and even the waterfalls and expensive decorative stone tile surrounding it.
Last but certainly not least, "Salt is also environmentally and ecologically friendly." What? Since when? Tell that to the folks in Santa Clarita, CA, who can't install new salt-based water softeners because the chloride level in the Santa Clara River is affecting the crops and throwing the local fauna out of balance. Tell that to the folks in Australia who lose more than $130 million of agricultural production annually from salinity. When you have to drain that pool at some point, where is it all going to go? When you backwash the filter, where does the water go? It is illegal in Santa Clarita for new or existing salt pools to be connected to the sewer system. Does anyone out there seriously think they did that just for fun? Apparently the purveyors of the aforementioned salt chlorine generator (I like to call things by their proper name) don't get it. Or maybe they will just say whatever they think will sell you a system. For shame.
The Pool Guy also brought to my attention this article in the Florida Sentinel asserting that salt pools are ecologically friendly pools.... Huh?
Particularly interesting are these two lines, that really truly do come one right after the other:
A salt system converts salt into chlorine, eliminating the need to transport and handle chlorine tablets or liquid. "Chlorine is a toxic chemical," said Tracy DeCarlo, a Florida Green Home certifying agent and a home-design function analyst with Detailed Solutions Inc. "I don't believe we should be drinking it or swimming in it."Okay....so what exactly do you think you are swimming in if it's not Chlorine?? NOTE: I received a reply to an email I sent to Tracy. Turns out Ms. DeCarlo was somewhat misquoted. She was trying to be helpful to the reporter, and did not consider herself an expert on ecologically friendly pools. Rather than pointing the reporter in the right direction, she was quoted as being knowledgeable in this area.
The worst thing about this article is that the Florida Green Building Council is stating that a salt system is one of the choices to satisfy the green pool prerequisite to qualify for the "Florida Green Home Standard". Other choices include a competitor of ours that reduces the amount of Chlorine instead of eliminating Chlorine like ECOsmarte Pools will.
So...all you ECOsmarte dealers in Florida are hereby put on notice - straighten those people out down there!
I am a member of the Green Building Council of Ventura County. We just merged with San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara Counties to create the California Central Coast Chapter of the US Green Building Council. We hold no such misconceptions about salt pools here. Probably because I would loudly take issue with any such assertions from a salt chlorine generator rep - I've done the research.
(And I have to admit The Pool Guy made some of my research much easier. Thanks for the links, Pool Guy.)
Comments (4)
ok so in reply to your comments about saltwater pools yes the pool is chlorinated but its a natural process. the only reason the chlorine is toxic is because of the binding agents they use to transport it which causes irritation to your eyes and bleaches your hair and dryes out your skin. if they did not put in these harmful chemicals to transport and store chlorine, the stuff would never make it out of the factory. last time i heard making salt didn't involve a chemical process with binding agents. also the amount of chlorine is about equivalent to the saline content in your body and i don't see humans corroding. therefore the chlorine generated from your saltwater pool is a natural chlorine without the binding products and it turns back into salt when reentering the pool by the way. hope this will help you understand what your trying to say. maybe you should check your facts first and by the way your great pool guy hates saltwater pools because he looses money on the sale of chemicals to his customers.
Posted by hampton pool group | April 2, 2008 2:03 PM
hampton pool group,
Thanks for visiting the ECOsmarte blog.
I have heard that there are fewer chloramines in a salt chlorine generator pool as compared to a regular chlorine pool, but I wouldn't call it a "natural" process. Interestingly enough, this is a result of increased levels of free chlorine that oxidize the chloramines which form from organic materials and chlorine. The smell of Chlorine and stinging eyes are due to insufficient chlorine levels.
The chlorine generated by a SCG still needs cyanuric acid to stabilize it and keep available free chlorine residuals in the water. Perhaps that is what you meant when you mentioned "binding agents"? There are pretty names for this stuff, too; pool stabilizer, pool conditioner. Too much cyanuric acid can cause skin reactions. Too little leaves your (outdoor) pool unprotected from bacteria as the sun decreases the effectiveness of the chlorine. Why do all that nasty balancing when you can have a sanitized pool without the chemicals?
Saline content has caused documented damage to pools - just do a google search, or dig a little deeper in this blog!
And if you read the pool guy's posts - you'll see that actually, replacing equipment, pumps, filters, sweeps and SCG parts make him far more money than chemicals.
Posted by Wendy | April 4, 2008 2:19 AM
Those of us in the north are replacing both the grass and the underlying soil at curbs edge this month due to the road salt destruction. Environment Canada has banned the use of road salt in Ontario and those of us in MN would like to have the same legislation. The latest chart on saltwater pools is they attract bees-- maybe the environmental negatives are greater then we even know.
It is nonsence that brine discharge generators are environmentally friendly-- or eliminate algaecide and cyanide stabilizer for that matter.
The term is salting the earth, the principle is 2200 years old LC
Posted by larry couture | May 9, 2008 7:24 AM
Hey Larry, thanks for visiting. Always nice to have a visit from the man at the top (ECOsmarte CEO).
The news about salt pools attracting honeybees is new to me - sounds like more bees are drowning in salt pools than other pools - at a time when the bee situation is critical. This is from yesterday's Guardian in the UK:
"We've heard a lot about bees buzzing off in a mysterious fashion. Last year around 800,000 of the 2.4m hives in the US were wiped out by a strange disease and this year initial losses are reported to be even greater, with 1m beehive deaths."
One more reason to "just say no" to a salt-chlorine generator pool system.
Posted by Wendy | May 9, 2008 6:00 PM