Frequent Questions
Swimming Pool Purification

Chlorine added to your pool as a liquid or in tablets bonds too easily with waste matter in your pool water, forming compounds called chloramines. When you smell a strong chlorine odor after heavy pool activity, you are actually smelling these chloramine compounds. Chloramine compounds are the primary cause of itchy skin, red eyes, and bleached out bathing suits. The Guardian® Turbocell® continuously oxidizes chloramines and produces creates the “free” or “available” chlorine that keeps your pool water disinfected. Also, you will avoid the hassle, time, expense, and safety risk of buying, storing and handling chlorine.

The Guardian® Turbocell® chlorinator has plenty of output for any in-ground swimming pool up to 40,000 gallons. A typical 12 x 28 residential swimming pool holds about 12,000 gallons of water. The Guardian® Turbocell® will not harm pool finishes or deck surfaces.

The Guardian® Turbocell® chlorinator is designed for use with in-ground pools and should not be used with a portable spa or hot tub because its chlorine output is much too great for these applications.

The Guardian® Turbocell® works best with approximately 3,200 ppm of salt, which is about one teaspoon per gallon. However, the Guardian® Turbocell® will run just fine with salt levels between 2,700 ppm and 3,400 ppm.

You should not be able to taste any salt in the pool. On the other hand, some people with particularly sensitive palates might detect a small salt taste.

Test the chlorine level of the pool on a weekly basis, just as you would normally. Adjust the dial of the Guardian® Turbocell® chlorinator to supply more or less chlorine as needed. After heavy swimming use or if the pool water is cloudy for any reason, you can set the Guardian® chlorinator to SUPER CHLORINATE, which generates chlorine at maximum output for 24 hours. The Turbocell® should be inspected and cleaned if necessary, at least every three months or so when starting up the system.

Most pool supply stores, grocery stores, Home Depot, Lowes, and Walmart (in the garden section) carry 40-pound bags of salt. You use the same common salt that is used in water conditioners.

A quick approximation is length x width x average depth x 7.5. A simple formula for average depth is (deep end depth + shallow end depth)/2. If you have a residential swimming pool and don’t have any depth information, just assume an average depth of 4.5 feet. For a freeform pool, measure the length at the longest point. For the width, just average the widths at the widest and narrowest points.

The chlorinator’s sensor and the sensor in any tester have accuracy tolerances that may vary from device to device. It is not unusual for any two devices to produce slightly different readings. Typical accuracy tolerances are in a range of 100–300 parts per million (ppm), so a variation of 400–600 ppm is usually not a concern.

This simply means that the unit is showing results in metric mode. Pressing the diagnostic button once will display the temperature in Celsius. With the Celsius temperature displayed, flip the switch to SUPER CHLORINATE, then back to AUTO to change the mode to Fahrenheit and ppm.

The unit will run in two different electrical polarities, periodically changing polarity while the pump is running. The desired output percentage dial tells the chlorinator how long to generate in each polarity. The SUPER CHLORINATE setting tells the system to ignore the dial setting for 24 hours and generate chlorine at 100 percent of its output capability.

Murriatic acid helps control your pool’s pH level. If the pH rises too high, adding murriatic acid will lower pH to a more tolerable level. Alkalinity helps to stabilize pH level, but some variation is inevitable.