Switching to salt

[JimK]

I have to agree with Carl. No matter what a dealer may tell you a salt system is not cheaper than manually chlorinating, and perhaps costs more.

That said, I love my salt system because of the convenience it offers. This past season my main pump died and I had to manually chlorinate for about a week or so. I was so happy to get my salt system back up and running once the pump was replaced!

Btw, to answer the original question, we got our Aqua Rite at the same time we had our pool installed in 2004. I believe it ran about $1000 installed. Since then the cell has been replaced once and a circuit board had to be replaced (about $650 combined). So I figured that comes to about $165 per season, not including electricity costs to run it.

[Pool Clown]

You can expect to pay about 700-900 dollars depending on who you go with. You can pay up to 10 dollars a #40 bag for salt, again, depending where you get it. Best place to get the unit is going to be on line, look around for the best price and don't forget shipping charges ($$). I would purchase the salt locally due to weight/shipping. You will need hundreds of pounds of salt depending on the size of the pool, so you can see that getting salt on-line may not be the most economical way to go. Get the unit first before buying salt as different manufacturers require different salt levels.