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Replies
Richard Earnhardt said:
My experience with Link Automation made me of the opinion that sometimes too many parameters leave lots of room for error, and then backtracking and trying to figure out what went wrong can be a nightmare. I like to keep it pretty basic - give me adjustable feed pumps, alarm limits, and good probes, and I can engineer the details for pretty good control.
My experience with CO2 is that if you're using it to get away from using Muriatic, you probably won't be able to. As CO2 increases your alkalinity, you will eventually need to lower it, and most people use muriatic to accomplish this. All the way around, it's never made sense to me.
CO2 works, but if you don't have room for a good sized storage tank on that 500,000 gallon pool it will be a maintenance nightmare. Best to set up a large bulk tank and regular deliveries from your local CO2 vendor.
Less hazardous than muriatic acid, but needs a lot more of it.
I'm not sure what Richard meant by cryptic. The CAT controllers look sleaker than Acu-Trol for sure, but there are programming functions I enjoy having in the AK100 & AK600 that aren't available in the CAT 2000 or CAT 4000. Regardless both are good controls.
As for CO2, the capitol cost is higher but it seems to carry a higher operating expense too. Again, I have seen systems changed to CO2 and not too far down the road changed back to muriatic acid. Be interesting to read others experiences.
I think Hayward is making a salt chlorine generator system that uses ORP control (not like a traditional controller, though). It has pH control also. The probes and flow cell are obviously CAT's, but private labeled. I have no experience with these, but saw one at a trade show and I have heard at least one comment that the controllers themselves aren't quite up to speed yet.
Check out the CAT 1000 for pH only control.
I've also used Chemtrol, Strantrol, CAT, Polaris and Pool Pilot. All the units perform as advertised, I prefer the Acu-Trol units.