Fred Wagner is president of Poolman. A premiere pool-service company in Phoenix, Arizona, Poolman services more than 5,600 pools each week. In this article, Wagner explains the benefits of a salt-water pool system.
Saltwater pool systems have been increasing in popularity in recent years, and one reason why is because of how great these systems are on the skin. Pool owners with these types of systems avoid ever having a large amount of chlorine in their pools since the saltwater system generates chlorine and replaces it in the pool gradually and consistently.
Swimming in a saltwater system is nothing like swimming in the ocean because much less salt is in the water of a pool. However, compared to swimming in regular pools, which typically have what is known as hard water, the water in these types of systems is extremely soft.
After you have swum in a saltwater system pool, your skin will be silky smooth. Or at least it will be when you compare it to the feeling of getting out of a standard chlorine pool, after which skin starts to dry and people tend to get scaly, flaky skin. After most people get out of a standard pool, the first thing they tend to do is shower and put on lots of lotion to compensate for how dry their skin feels. But, this just isn’t the case with saltwater systems.
The reason is fairly simple: The human body is actually composed of a lot of salt. I like to use people’s eyes as an example. After you swim in a normal chlorinated pool, your eyes tend to get red and itchy. That is because the water in that pool doesn’t have salt in it, but your eyes do. So that water is removing the salt that naturally moisturizes the eyes. It is pulling the salt out, so your eyes become dry and irritated. When you are swimming in a saltwater pool, meanwhile, your body is in a more equal balance with the saltwater, so the water itself is not taking the salt out of your body. It just isn’t drying you out as much as a highly chlorinated pool would.
In Australia, people have already discovered the benefits of these types of systems, which is why almost 100% of Australian pools have saltwater systems. Although Americans have only been using saltwater in their pools for about 10 years, this is definitely a pool trend that I think will stay around for a long time.
