Short answer YES! Chlorinators save you time and money.

Chlorinators produce a clean renewable chlorine for you pool.

All you have to do is add salt to you pool, set-up the automatic timer and desired chlorine output.

No need to buy, store or handle potentially harmful chlorine products.

How Chlorinators work.

 Firstly to have a saltwater chlorinator working on a pool there must have a level of salt in the water.

The majority of chlorinators run on a salt level of 4000ppm, which is about 250kg of salt in a 50,000 liter pool.

Regardless of what media you are using in your filter and operation is the same.

(Please note: this is basic information on how chlorinators work, not scientific)

A saltwater chlorinator is a unit that consists of a small control box and a plastic housing which fits into the pool plumbing.

Inside the plastic housing there are metal plates called anodes and cathodes. An anode is a positive changed plate and a cathode is negative changed plate. This housing is commonly known as a “cell”. The chlorinator control box provides a small electrical current to the cell as the pool water is circulated by the pools filter system, the metal plates in the cell, come in to contact with the pool water.

This is where the magic happens, the small electrical current on the metal plates has a reaction with the salty water which produces chlorine.

Most all control boxes have the ability to regulate the amount of chlorine they produce. Turning the chlorine production up on the box will increase of electrical current to the cell, this will enables you to adjust the correct chlorine level to suit your pool.

Chlorinator boxes have a power point fitted. This is where the pool pump must be plugged. Conveniently, most chlorinators have time clocks, so as well as controlling the chlorine level you can control the hours the pool system runs.

This is great if you notice your pool going off, or you just need to super chlorinate the water.

The difference between self cleaning chlorinators and non cleaning chlorinators.

Inside the cell where the chlorine is produced certain chlorinators get a calcium build up on the cathode plates of the cell (which is the negative plates) this must be cleaned off with acid diluted with water.

In a self cleaning chlorinator the negative and positive plates keep swapping polarity so calcium doesn’t get a change to build up on the cathode plate, because the cathode will soon become an anode (which is the positive plate) and so on.