I'm feeling overwhelmed. Please tell me in a couple of bullet points why you chose one over the other (and if you're happy with or regret your decision). This is for a pool in CS fwiw. Thanks!

I've had two SW pools and would recommend SW.
- easier on the eyes and skin
- less maintenance
- constant levels of chlorine

Downsides to SW are that you need to seal your stone as the SW will etch it, and any metal near the pool can rust. Don't put a grill 5' from your pool.

My in-laws have a chlorine pool and my kids hate swimming in it bc the chlorine burns their eyes.

You'll probably get a lot of opinions on this subject…

Grew up with a chlorine pool. You get used to it and kids would never know the difference... I still get nostalgic when I smell bleach or chlorine.

If you have natural stone or metal fencing anywhere near the pool, stay away from the salt pool.

Chlorine pool with an ozone system. Easier to maintain than both other types and no chlorine smell unless you have to shock the pool because you let it get way out of balance.

Have you chosen a pool builder? We put a pool in here in BCS in 2020. We have chlorine. I did the same thing you're doing and went down the salt water rabbit hole. The 3 big/established pool builders here in town all suggested chlorine. I went with their suggestion and we are very happy. If you maintain the chemistry right you really don't smell much chlorine or feel like you're swimming in chlorine at all.

There is a good thread on the home improvement board on pool building if you want to search and find it.

I heard saltwater pools don't work well down south because the water temp gets too hot.

Any truth to that?

Built my pool a little over 3 years ago. Chlorine. Happy.

Remember - they cost a lot to build and a lot to maintain well, so if you'll struggle with cash to build or operate one it may not be a good time. Don't go into debt building or running one at these high interest rates.

Previous owners of our current house built a salt water pool. Thankfully the pool was only 2.5 years old when we bought. It's our first pool so we are relatively inexperienced. We do like the relative comfort of the saltwater. The coping is flagstone so we've had some surface flaking but not sure how much of that is due to the winter storms and how much is due to the salt water. Kids are grown so while there is splashing when we have guests the coping is not getting soaked day after day as you would expect with a younger family.

We would have converted a standard chlorine pool to saltwater as the kid has issues in a standard chlorine pool but has no problem tolerating a salt water pool.

Salt chlorinator finally burned out so recently bought a new one. They aren't cheap. The multi-colored LED pool light went out after only 2 years. It was around $800 or so pre-covid to replace.

Grew up with a chlorine pool and had a blast. Now have a salt water pool and my kids are having a blast. I don't see the huge maintenance difference between the two. Definitely less chlorine purchase but I still have to clean the filters and salt cell occasionally like a chlorine pool. I'd go with what your cleaners in the area recommend.

And heat is good for salt water pools. Salt water cells won't produce chlorine below 55*

Bought a house with a new chlorine pool. Converted it to saltwater thinking the chemical costs would be lower and family would like the salt water feel. Did like the feel of the salt water but didn't really see lower maintenance costs. And wasn't that much easier to keep balanced than a chlorine pool if you reasonably stay on top of it on a weekly basis. After a few years started getting salt buildup on the pool sides and flagstone started to serious flake due to salt exposure. Also got serious case of blue algae in the pool (I guess from going to the beach and then getting into the pool) which was a huge pain and very difficult to get rid of. Went back to chlorine about 5 years ago and family didn't even know for several years. Bottom line is salt is a corrosive chemical and will eventually cause significant damage requiring major expense. Wish I would have stayed with chlorine the whole time, because now I need to replace the flagstone which will cost a lot.

We have a salt water pool. Have had it for three years with no issues. We live in East Tennessee so our season is shorter than you guys in Texas. However, we installed a propane heater last year to add a couple of months.

We put in a SW pool because one kid has skin issues and we heard this was the way to go. Been very happy with it

One thing that stood out to us was that we got quotes from 3 different companies and all recommended different types to build. SW, chlorine and there was another type that I can't recall. We told all of them about the skin issues and got 3 different recs, which we thought was strange.

Did some research and it seems that SW was the right choice for us

Stat Monitor Repairman said:

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I heard saltwater pools don't work well down south because the water temp gets too hot.

Any truth to that?

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Nope. As long as you keep your cyanuric acid levels at a reasonable level they handle full Texas sun well. Salt cells don't like cold water. Once the water temp gets down to 55ish degrees they stop generating chlorine. So in the winter you basically run a chlorine pool.

ag0207 said:

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Stat Monitor Repairman said:

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I heard saltwater pools don't work well down south because the water temp gets too hot.

Any truth to that?

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Nope. As long as you keep your cyanuric acid levels at a reasonable level they handle full Texas sun well. Salt cells don't like cold water. Once the water temp gets down to 55ish degrees they stop generating chlorine. So in the winter you basically run a chlorine pool.

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This has been our experience as well but the maintenance company takes care of it. That usually means they add the chlorine tablets in the skimmers over the winter

bhanacik said:

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ag0207 said:

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Stat Monitor Repairman said:

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I heard saltwater pools don't work well down south because the water temp gets too hot.

Any truth to that?

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Nope. As long as you keep your cyanuric acid levels at a reasonable level they handle full Texas sun well. Salt cells don't like cold water. Once the water temp gets down to 55ish degrees they stop generating chlorine. So in the winter you basically run a chlorine pool.

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This has been our experience as well but the maintenance company takes care of it. That usually means they add the chlorine tablets in the skimmers over the winter

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I would find a new company stat then. You have a tablet feeder for a reason. Putting chlorine directly through the pump and filter and heater like that will destroy the insides of your equipment due to the high level of concentration of chlorine. Especially your heater.

Yesterday said:

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Grew up with a chlorine pool and had a blast. Now have a salt water pool and my kids are having a blast. I don't see the huge maintenance difference between the two. Definitely less chlorine purchase but I still have to clean the filters and salt cell occasionally like a chlorine pool. I'd go with what your cleaners in the area recommend.

And heat is good for salt water pools. Salt water cells won't produce chlorine below 55*

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Yep. When property operated there is almost no difference between the two. You're not swimming in a salty pool, you are using salt to generate chlorine.

OP should spend a day on the Trouble Free Pool website.

My pool is not salt water. I use liquid chlorine to avoid elevated cyanurics associated with the tablets. Easy and works great but takes me monitoring Cl levels pretty frequently. If I was starting from scratch I would strongly consider a salt water generator. Set it and forget it.

CactusThomas said:

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Yesterday said:

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Grew up with a chlorine pool and had a blast. Now have a salt water pool and my kids are having a blast. I don't see the huge maintenance difference between the two. Definitely less chlorine purchase but I still have to clean the filters and salt cell occasionally like a chlorine pool. I'd go with what your cleaners in the area recommend.

And heat is good for salt water pools. Salt water cells won't produce chlorine below 55*

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Yep. When property operated there is almost no difference between the two. You're not swimming in a salty pool, you are using salt to generate chlorine.

OP should spend a day on the Trouble Free Pool website.

My pool is not salt water. I use liquid chlorine to avoid elevated cyanurics associated with the tablets. Easy and works great but takes me monitoring Cl levels pretty frequently. If I was starting from scratch I would strongly consider a salt water generator. Set it and forget it.

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&ct=g

I have SW built 2 yrs ago
Kids have had some skin issues - main reason
Friends have old chlorine pool - my kids eyes were red/burned

For the comments on here re: flagstone flaking - there's a 95% chance that's directly related to the SW pool. If you put natural stone around SW you MUST wash & seal the stone at a minimum annually if you don't want it to flake. I have flagstone so this is a day of maintenance every 9-12 months I wouldn't have if it wasn't SW.

Overall I don't fully see the point in SW over these newer (much lower) chlorine pools. I think they are called "freshwater" pools.

We love ours, but we also were very clear to downsides to SW & accepted those. Educate yourself on those before committing to SW.

SW pools are great. If you build a deck, be aware of the hardware you attach your boards with. Need to use corrosion resistant fasteners or your deck will hurt your feelings in a few years.

Put a chlorine pool in about 3 years ago and love it. Chlorine smell or feel not strong at all. We were open to either but our pool builder said they were almost exclusively doing chlorine now.

I had chlorine pools for 40 years and swam underwater with my eyes open regularly with no problems. As long as your pH level is between 7.4-7.8, you won't have any eye issues.

Friends had a lap pool that was 4' deep and widened and deepened at one end for kids to play and for them to practice scuba stuff. It was saltwater.

They loved it, everyone that visited and swam in it loved it. They never seemed to have any trouble with it but the owners were both engineers that tend to detail pretty well so there wasn't ever going to be an issue.

If you want to replace pool equipment and anything close the pool every other year than sal****er is your choice.

They make ozone treatments and stuff that really help with the chlorine these days.

2ndChanceAg96 said:

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If you want to replace pool equipment and anything close the pool every other year than saltwater is your choice.

They make ozone treatments and stuff that really help with the chlorine these days.

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TexAgs filter never ceases to amaze me.

dr_boogs said:

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2ndChanceAg96 said:

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If you want to replace pool equipment and anything close the pool every other year than sal****er is your choice.

They make ozone treatments and stuff that really help with the chlorine these days.

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TexAgs filter never ceases to amaze me.

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Lol. That's odd!

That's what happens when you put sal(t)(wat)er together.

Saltwater here. I put 3ft of rock all the way around the existing 4ft of concrete deck. The grass really doesn't get exposed that way and mine is looking good. No doubt I'll need some concrete work in the future though.
Girlfriend insisted on salt water. It didn't matter much to me at the time but I really like it now.

I'm also in the preliminary stages of pool planning. Anybody have any experience with UV/ozone systems?

And invest in a Dolphin Robot pool cleaner.

Finishing a build now. We chose chlorine because I'm familiar with it. Pool builder said it's about 10 to 1 in favor of chlorine. The biggest thing we fretted over was finish and went with the polished pebble (primera stone). Pricey but seems worth it.

sal****er

Now that's funny right there!

Another vote for liquid chlorine and the TFP website. Switched from chlorine tablets 3 years ago and bought a Stenner dosing pump connected by my Pentair controller. Maintenance is a breeze, CYA is under control, and haven't seen a trace of algae since the switch. Tablets alone cannot put enough chlorine into a Texas pool in the summer without causing CYA to go extremely high (which basically reduces the chlorine's effectiveness as a sanitizer). .

Also agree that eye irritation is most likely pH out of range. Also that chlorine smell is due to combined chlorine being too high. TFP website is great on explaining how to correctly manage your pool chemistry.

2ndChanceAg96 said:

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If you want to replace pool equipment and anything close the pool every other year than saltwater is your choice.

They make ozone treatments and stuff that really help with the chlorine these days.

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Salt water pool going on 10 years here. Sandstone coping which we seal every few years. All original equipment still with the exception we have replaced the salt water generator once. If maintained correctly they are about as easy as it gets in pool maintenance. I have nothing against chlorine pools but didn't want to have to add liquid chlorine as frequently as they require. There are a ton of false narratives out there about salt pools and I see you have bought into them also. No matter what you chose use troublefreepool and you will be fine.