Best Place To Buy Pool Salt
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If you own a swimming pool and are trying to find out where is the best place to buy salt for your pool then this article should be helpful for you. First, not all pools need salt of course. Buying and adding sodium to your pool is something that you do when you have an electronic chlorine generator system which uses higher than normal salt levels (commonly 3000 parts per million). It does take a lot of salt to add up to 3000ppm in something as large as a swimming pool with larger pools needing many hundreds of pounds of pure salt to reach these levels.
If you are buying this much salt then you want to try to get a good deal...but if you buy pool salt from the wrong source you may get more than you bargained for. You can end up with old stock, salt which has crystalized into a solid cube, or even worse you can end up with impurities within the salt itself which can end up being big problems for your swimming pool. Pools are expensive and so it makes sense to be thrifty with your purchases but this should never be at the expense of the quality of the products that you are using and adding to maintain your pool water.
Pool salt is pure - Many pool owners have attempted to save some money on pool salt by using lower priced alternatives from the local hardware store. There you might find water softener salts or rock salts for de-icing purposes. While these products so contain sodium, of course, they also contain a host of impurities ranging from iron content to actual foreign materials and stones. None of these would be good in a swimming pool, and high iron or metal impurities within low quality salt can easily contribute to staining problems in swimming pools. You could easily invalidate any potential savings with the remediation chemicals you would need to deal with high iron levels in your pool water from impure salt. When you buy application specific "pool salt" it is 99.9% pure sodium and specifically lacks any impurities like metals. Some of the sodium options available from hardware stores will also contain potassium chloride instead of sodium chloride. Avoid all of these problems by using pure pool salt only in your pool.
Where to buy pool salt - Unfortunately buying salt for your pool is not going to be efficient if you shop online. Salt weighs too much and so you would end up spending more for shipping than you would if you were to buy your pool salt locally. While hardware stores carry salt, often the wrong kinds, some of them may seasonally carry pool salt for sale as well. Despite this I encourage all pool owners to avoid the big box hardware stores when buying salt for your pool. They often have old stock, improperly stored stock, low quality stock...all of which you can avoid by shopping with a dedicated pool and spa store. You will get higher quality products, and products which have been handled and stock rotated properly by professionals who deal exclusively with pool and spa chemicals. Even if the local hardware store sells similar pool salt for a dollar less per bag I would elect to pay more for salt from a pool store. The mark up on pool salt is extremely lean. You might pay $5 or $10 for the total order of salt that you need if you shop from a pool store versus a big box store, but I am confident this small investment would be worth it for fresher, higher quality products.
Saving money on pool chemicals is not always the great deal that it appears to be on the surface. Your pool is important and attached permanently to your home so you want to do what you can to protect your investment. Using low quality, discount brand pool chemicals of any kind, pool salt included, often ends up costing you more in the long run than if you had just spent more in higher quality chemicals in the first place. After a lifetime in the pool and spa industry I can definitely say that I have noticed problems associated with low quality or old pool chemicals. Many low quality products use fillers, some unknown in quantity or substance...no thanks!
Despite a relatively well known stigma of pool stores only existing to rip pool owners off and sell chemicals that you "don't need" I can tell you that this is simply not true. Good people work in the pool and spa industry, but I would admit there is a good amount of misinformation and low experience levels with seasonal support staff that pool stores need to use to weather peak periods. I think this is responsible for a lot of the problems associated with buying and using chemicals from a local pool store. In reality they have better quality and fresher chemicals than big box stores, and generally more experienced pool specific staff...but you might have to ask for the manager to get to the people with the most experience.
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Swimming Pool Steve is an award winning, second generation swimming pool and spa specialist from Ontario Canada. With over 10,000,000 views on the Swimming Pool Steve YouTube Channel, winner of the 2018 Pool & Spa Industry Leadership award and author of hundreds of pool and spa articles both online and in print Steve is committed to helping pool and spa owners as well as pool and spa industry workers learn more about the technical side of building, renovating, repairing and maintaining all types of swimming pools and spas. Follow Swimming Pool Steve on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.
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