Best Salt?

[GMusic]

Does anyone have current recommendations on the best, reasonably priced, brand of salt to use for a SWG pool?

I have read that you want the following:

99.8%+ pure
Mined
Evaporated
Granulated
Food Quality
Non-Iodized

I cannot even find all these things on the salt I have looked at.

 

[mknauss]

Plain water softener salt. Available at Home Depot, Lowes, Walmart, etc.

 

[Propbndr]

I use morton salt from walmart. At $6.44 a bag it is about a dollar more than the softener salt you can get at Lowe’s or Home Depot. I have also used Clorox salt. Unlike softener salt, both of these dissolve almost instantly. The little bit of extra money they cost is worth not having to constant brushing to get the other stuff to dissolve. The Clorox brand is not liked by some pool owners. They blamed it for staining their pools. I have never had that issue.

 

[appstategrad]

Here is one of many threads available with some good info:

Clorox salt?

Does anyone have current recommendations on the best, reasonably priced, brand of salt to use for a SWG pool?

I have read that you want the following:

99.8%+ pure
Mined
Evaporated
Granulated
Food Quality
Non-Iodized

I cannot even find all these things on the salt I have looked at.

 

[GMusic]

Looks like the Morton, which I had seen, and the Diamond Crystal water softener salt are good choices.

Definitely not using the Clorox.

 

[Propbndr]

I have, in my mind, questioned the “reviews” that are posted by the pool owners that blame their staining problems on the salt they added. If Clorox pool salt stains pools as aledged by some owners, it would stain a lot more pools. Pool salt, no matter who sells it, is made in huge lots by a few companies and is sold under the labels such a HTH, Morton, and Clorox. I bet that if a stain shows up after the addition of salt to the pool, then something in the pool chemistry is going on, waiting to cause a problem. The addition of salt was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Unfortunately, the pool owner blames the last thing they added to their pool. If it happens to be Clorox brand, they blame Clorox.

I found this excellent article about staining and saltwater pools.

 

[GMusic]

Thank you everyone for the information and suggestions.

That is a good article.

From what I have been able to gather from different sources, based on the odds, you are usually fine adding decent quality salt. But if you end up getting a batch which has more impurities, shards, pebbles, etc., you can have issues. Some people dissolve the salt in a bucket and pour it in so that any heavy materials are left in the bucket. I guess that is the safest, but it sounds like a lot more work.

It also seems like you can never be 100% sure of what you are getting. I have seen labels say "up to X% pure." That does not really mean anything because as all that is really saying is that X% is the maximum purity and that the salt could be anything under that pureness level.