Pool water stings open skin

[riley00dog]

So my husband has narrowed the issue down to the chlorinator. We disconnected the chlorinator, ran the pump and there was no charge, hook up the chlorinator again and it's back again. [emoji53]

Given the issues I’m having with my chlorinator I am not really surprised to hear this. Good on your hubby for pin pointing the issue. Just grab some liquid chlorine and acid and dose according to the non swg chart on pool school and in pool maths change your pool from swg to non swg. Got to be easier than dealing with this system imo. Hopefully they will replace quickly. Your warranty should held by your pb.

 

[uxbridgechris]

does the SWG controller have a big, bare copper wire bolted to it?

 

[Hails]

Given the issues I’m having with my chlorinator I am not really surprised to hear this. Good on your hubby for pin pointing the issue. Just grab some liquid chlorine and acid and dose according to the non swg chart on pool school and in pool maths change your pool from swg to non swg. Got to be easier than dealing with this system imo. Hopefully they will replace quickly. Your warranty should held by your pb.

Oh really hmm, your having issues with yours too?

 

[Hails]

does the SWG controller have a big, bare copper wire bolted to it?

The back of the actual chlorinator where the wiring is looks like this. Is this what you mean?

 

[mknauss]

No. He is asking about the bonding wire. Though, as I remember, you do not have a bonding system on your pool as it is not necessary in Australia for a fiberglass pool.

 

[riley00dog]

Not having issues with our wiring (that I know of). Have had/having issues with no flow messages, auto dosing and ph probe calibration problems (not sure if you have the ph probe - if you don’t good!). Overall it’s just been a nightmare. It seems it wasn’t set up properly to start with and I’m still not sure if that is all it it is or whether I have a lemon. Pb came out again on Friday and if this hasn’t fixed things once and for all I’m calling Astral out even if I have to pay for the call out fee. This has been going on for month. I think things are fine, then a late night ccl test tells me it’s not and I’m out there with the chlorine or acid at midnight. Happened more times than I care to recall. Call your pb tomorrow and he should be able to organise a replacement immediately. Pb was talking about replacing mine at the beginning but they thought it was sorted. Wish they had and will be pushing for it if things aren’t sorted.

 

[Hails]

Not having issues with our wiring (that I know of). Have had/having issues with no flow messages, auto dosing and ph probe calibration problems (not sure if you have the ph probe - if you don’t good!). Overall it’s just been a nightmare. It seems it wasn’t set up properly to start with and I’m still not sure if that is all it it is or whether I have a lemon. Pb came out again on Friday and if this hasn’t fixed things once and for all I’m calling Astral out even if I have to pay for the call out fee. This has been going on for month. I think things are fine, then a late night ccl test tells me it’s not and I’m out there with the chlorine or acid at midnight. Happened more times than I care to recall. Call your pb tomorrow and he should be able to organise a replacement immediately. Pb was talking about replacing mine at the beginning but they thought it was sorted. Wish they had and will be pushing for it if things aren’t sorted.

Oh not good at all, how annoying.

I read in the paperwork for ours that it has a positively charged sensor on it which I believe it the blue wire at the top, sounds like it's coming from there to me.

 

[riley00dog]

Quite likely. This could have been a whole lot worse and what about the people who think nothing of it or don’t notice until it’s too late? A bit scary really.

 

[Dirk]

So my husband has narrowed the issue down to the chlorinator. We disconnected the chlorinator, ran the pump and there was no charge, hook up the chlorinator again and it's back again. [emoji53]

NOT an expert, but I know a bit about electricity, and troubleshooting it. Just because you alleviated the issue by removing the SWG from the equation, does not mean there is anything wrong with the SWG. The SWG might just be a component of your system that is incompatible with whatever the real problem is. Just because the problem goes away in the absence of the SWG, does not mean that it won't resurface when some other variable is applied.

It might very well be the problem, but unless you know what you're doing, I'm recommending you don't trust your own troubleshooting skills to solve this.

Correct me if I'm wrong, someone, but the purpose of bonding (one of, anyway) is to safeguard people in the pool from anything going wrong electrically with any component of the pool system. So even if the SWG was wired incorrectly, or shorting, or malfunctioning in someway, you still shouldn't have felt that in the pool. Any errant electricity should be sent to ground, not into the water.

Even if you determine that the SWG or the way it's wired is to blame, I don't think that is the only problem. I think you still need a "sparky" to test your system, one that is an expert in pool wiring.

And just because a government agency doesn't require something, to make something safe, or safer, doesn't mean it isn't required, it just means not enough people have died from it yet.

Dun, dun, dunnnnnnnnnn...

 

[jblizzle]

That is correct. To feel a tingle requires 2 failures. One is the source of the electrical potential. And the other is the bonding system. If the latter was correct, you would not feel anything, which is the entire point of the bonding system.

 

[Hails]

Ok so I emailed astral regarding the stray voltage and this was their reply. I cannot believe nothing was mentioned anywhere regarding bonding the pool and we had no idea about it until I posted in this forum. We've owned 3 swimming pools before this one (2 above ground and one 15 year old fibreglass inground) and none of them were bonded. [emoji53]

 

[Dirk]

Don't have it in me tonight to comment on the shear number of layers of wrong. Suffice to say... it sounds like you're on to the cause, which means someone will know how to fix it! Yay!!

 

[sktn77a]

Apparently, Fluida don't know the difference between bonding and earthing!

Get a licensed electrician with experience with swimming pools to take the "shock test" and have him fix the problem.

 

[riley00dog]

Apparently, Fluida don't know the difference between bonding and earthing!

Get a licensed electrician with experience with swimming pools to take the "shock test" and have him fix the problem.

This is the major supplier of pool equipment in Australia. There are a lot of pools here so it’s scary to read this email and realise how little they actually know. Not that it’s their area of expertise but a basic understanding should be a given.

 

[Costas > DownUnder]

To the OP - Did you get any further with this issue?

I have a theory (possible explanation) but need to run a couple of tests when I get a chance on the weekend to prove or disprove my theory.

 

[Hails]

To the OP - Did you get any further with this issue?

I have a theory (possible explanation) but need to run a couple of tests when I get a chance on the weekend to prove or disprove my theory.

So we've struggled to get an electrician in our area that knows about pool bonding, we spoke to several that said we dont need to bond it as it's not a requirement in Australia, they weren't really concerned about the stray voltage in our pool as it was only 2 volts ?*??
We spoke to one over the phone that talked us through how to bond the water, now the water, fence and all metal components around the pool have been bonded and there is no more current in the pool. We believe that as the water in the pool was all encapsulated by fibreglass and zero metal components in the water as we have plastic lights etc, there was nowhere for any stray currents to escape. We now have a copper rod in the skimmer box and its bonded to everything else surrounding the pool and the current is gone.

I'd love to hear your theories still [emoji6]

 

[ajw22]

It is fixed and no more tingle. That’s what counts. Good work.

 

[Costas > DownUnder]

I'd love to hear your theories still [emoji6]

I was going to suggest bonding of the actual water as it is not actually an issue with any of the outside components being bonded or not.

As you noted - being a fibreglass pool, the water itself is insulated from everything - except for one item and that is the chlorinator's cell.

I performed a couple of tests last week with my chlorinator (Astralpool Equilibrium 45) and found the same.

It produces (approx.) a 2V to 3v AC potential difference between itself and whatever else is touching the cell - In this case the pool water.

However when I tried to measure the actual current flow between the pool water and ground - In my case it was in the uA region - ie. extremely small.

When you have unbroken skin, your skin resistance is actually quite high - but on an open wound/cut, the resistance is way lower and in effect that part of your body now becomes very sensitive to any current flow.



I suspect it is all due to the chlorinator's switch mode power supply and it is not a fault as such but merely a design symptom.

By actually bonding your water the potential difference is equalised between the water and the chlorinator cell thereby preventing any current to flow (potential difference is now zero between these items).

If I get a chance this weekend I would like to perform a couple of isolation tests on my chlorinator.

Note that it is actually the current that is the problem rather than purely the voltage.

 

[uxbridgechris]

I put this in my skimmer and tied into bonding grid with 6 gauge copper.

Untitled Document

small money

 

[Dirk]

As mentioned (Post #70), you had two issues to resolve. Sounds like you might have found two. Hope so. Is there a way to test to at least confirm you solved the bonding problem?

Regarding the copper, just throwing out a question. Is there any concern for introducing copper like that into pool water? Could that leech copper and end up staining something else in the pool? The part in uxbridgechris' link is stainless steel.

And is bonding water a non-issue for concrete pools? Does bonding the rebar cover that? I have a pool light that I assume is bonded. Would its stainless steel metal ring be bonded? And would that serve to bond the water?

Does everybody with an SWG have this potential problem? They are, after all, putting two electrically charged plates into saltwater. Would everyone "feel" their SWG if their water wasn't bonded?