Challenge
Oregon City Swimming Pool is located in the Portland Oregon metro area. The facility is unique as it has a 200,000 gallon indoor pool and a seasonal 50,000 gallon outdoor wading pool. The wading pool is supplied with water from the indoor swimming pool, necessitating a need for a higher residual in the summer months.
When the wading pool is in use, the chlorine demand can vary dramatically, and the previous chemical controller struggled to respond accurately to the change in chlorine demand. Pool Manager Dale Smelser contacted Neal Hershey, from Interlocked Filtration, to improve his water chemistry and buy a new chemical controller for his pool.
Solution
In early 2016, Neal Hershey suggested installing Neptune-Benson‘s Blu-Sentinel™ Pro for the following reasons:
1) The new controller uses the well proven amperometric bare electrode free chlorine sensor as well the well known Strantrol pH and HRR/ORP probes, which have an excellent reputation for accuracy and useful service life. The controller logs the last 5 calibrations of each installed measurement in a separate calibration log. The calibration log is an important tool to confirm the performance of the sensors and helps to determine when a sensor requires additional cleaning or replacement.
2) The free chlorine probe is continually hydro-mechanically cleaned using quartz grit during operation assuring accurate and reliable performance.3) The 7 inch touch screen provides intuitive operation of the controller, similar to the ease of a tablet or smartphone.
3) The Controller includes an Ethernet interface which can use a freely downloadable VNC viewer app to a PC, tablet or smart phone allows for complete replication of the touch screen on the mentioned devices. This allows the operator to see the controller ́s display on their smartphone when on site but allows them to replicate the user interface while they are off-site if set up by the sites’ IT department.
4) Another important benefit of the controller is the CEDOX mode which can result in chemical and energy savings. This CEDOX mode is a special disinfection control algorithm which allows for the pool to use the minimum of chemicals while still meeting health codes. The chlorine setpoint in the CEDOX mode is dynamic, resulting in a lower chlorine setpoint when chlorine demand is low, typically at night when the facility is closed. When the pool opens in the morning and the chlorine demand increases the chlorine control setpoint also increases as is required.
Results
Since the controller’s installation Dale has noted the ease in operating the pool chemistry controller. It has required few recalibrations and the remote access feature both on site and off site has helped Dale save valuable time. The pool also operated during the summer months within the desired free chlorine limits even with the challenge of the fluctuating chlorine demand added by the wading pool.