A-Salted With Your Fishy Tale

Me: “Hello, this is [Pool Store]. How can I help you?”

Customer: *on the phone* “Hi, I just bought a house with a pool and had some questions.”

Me: “Certainly. First I need to know if it’s a salt or freshwater pool.”

Customer: “I don’t know; how could I find that out?”

Me: “I need to you check to see if you have a salt generator or not.”

Customer: “All right, I think it’s a salt pool. How would I start it up?”

Me: “Do you know the gallonage of your pool?”

Customer: “Yes, it’s [average size pool].”

Me: “All right. Well, looking at my chart, you’re going to need 625lbs of salt to reach the required concentration if the concentration is currently 0ppm.”

Customer: “That’s a lot of salt.”

Me: “Yes, it is, sir.”

Customer: “How would I add the salt?”

Me: “Just toss it into the pool; there’s no special way of adding it.”

Customer: “That’s not how you do it.”

Me: “Yes, it is, sir. There may be other systems out there but if it’s our pool then you don’t have a special salt system attached.”

Customer: “Are you sure that’s how you add it?”

Me: “Yes. You want to raise your salt level to between 3000ppm and 3500ppm and to go to that from scratch, for your size pool, you need to add 625lbs of salt.”

Customer: “All right. Is it going to taste like salt?”

Me: “That’s a common misconception with salt pools. If the salt is within that range you won’t taste salt; if it’s 6000pm or higher you may.”

Customer: “So you’re telling me I need to add 1250lbs of salt?”

Me: “Not unless you want to taste salt.”

Customer: “What if I want to?”

Me: “Why would you want to taste salt?”

Customer: “Because I want it to be like the ocean.”

Me: “Ok…”

Customer: “How much salt would I have to add to my pool to be able to put fish in and swim.”

Me: “Are you telling me you want to make an open air salt water aquarium out of your pool?”

Customer: “Yes.”

Me: “Then I suggest you talk to a pet store. We can sell the salt but I have no experience in maintaining marine life.”