Electricity needs of a typical SWCG?

Postby **Henry_R** » Tue 30 Aug, 2011 10:37

Hi all,

What are the typical electricity needs of a SWCG? My HOA has considered buying one for our community pool vs the trichlor feeder we have now, but we have ancient (40 yr old) aluminum wire and only a single dual-pole 20A breaker for the pool pump and light. I'm not sure that it would support more electricity without expensive rewiring with copper and likely a new service panel. This would make the cost prohibitive.

Postby **chem geek** » Wed 31 Aug, 2011 21:24

I answered this in another post. Typical specifications for common SWCG units are 230 V 1.5 Amps or 115 V 3 Amps so around 350 Watts. You'll want to get an oversized unit at least twice what they "minimally" recommend (their minimums are usually around 0.33 pounds of chlorine per 24-hour day per 10,000 gallons which works out to around 4 ppm FC over 24 hours, but only 1.3 ppm FC over 8 hours which is not enough -- you need at least twice if not three times that) . Pricing is not linear and the higher output cells will last longer since they will not need to be on as long. It will also provide you with more flexibility for higher bather load days. So for a 20,000 gallon pool, I'd get a unit rated at least at 1.3 pounds chlorine per day though 2 pounds chlorine per day would be better and the cell will last a lot longer.