Circupool 45,000 Gallon Salt Water Pool Conversion System

Apparently, having a saltwater pool is better then chlorine. When the chlorine water evaporates from your pool it can have devastating effects on surrounding places like your lawn and even your own water system or local water table.

((more info here))

But, I don;t have the pool or money for this.

Description says that “your pool will taste like a teardrop”. Wikipedia says tears have a salt content similar to blood plasma. A nursing education website says says blood plasma has a salt content of about 0.8% (8000 ppm).

Wikipedia says the density of sodium chloride is 2.16 gm/cm^3. An average sized swimming pool is 15’ x 30’ x 5.5’ deep or 2,475 cubic feet (70,084,195 cm^3).

To achieve a saline content of 8000 ppm, we’re going to need 560,673 cm^3 of salt, which would have a mass of 1,211 kg–or roughly 1 1/3 tons of salt.

Either this device requires a crazy amount of salt, or it doesn’t taste anywhere nearly as salty as tears… or my math is wrong.

Info about the first buyer kendog4: From http://thepoolguyslies.blogspot.com/2008/07/pool-guy.html

The Pool Guy said…
Here’s a comment I bet you won’t publish; Your salt system was featured on Woot on June 2nd, 2008. From the word GO there was misrepresentation in the sales of your systems. Not by Woot, but apparently by Woot’s supplier.

Kendog4 was the first to buy one and posted this: “I live in South Florida and nearly everyone has a salt pool. My brother spent over $1500 for his and I think it was for a smaller pool. At $699 this seems like a good deal.”

Oddly, the sales map registered the sale in Texas.

Then, Kendog4 posts this: "review can be found here: http://www.poolproductreviewsmagazine.com/CPSC_Series.htm "

Now, this is supposed to be some impartial product review magazine that’s reviewing your product and comes to the conclusion that it’s one heck of a deal. But after only 1 hour and 16 minutes of sales, someone comments:

"Hmm, the only states lit up at one o’clock were Texas and Missouri. I suspect insider trading.

How is that Kendog lives in Florida, bought the first unit, but only missouri and Texas were lit up?

How did Kendog find that review when it’s a page that you can’t get back to the root of? More later."

Then, 20 minutes later, someone posts:

"So I can buy it on woot for the same price I can order one on the web everyday! What a deal…

http://www.discountsaltpool.com/How_it_works.htm

$699 every day! Deal? Na… "

Then, Kendog4 volunteers this info at 2 pm:

“You can get a replacement cell at www.discountsaltpool.com for $289.”

To which someone responds: “Why can’t I find that anywhere on the site? Did you call them?”

At 2 am? I kinda doubt it.

By 2:30 pm someone posts: "…this makes me wonder, only because the website’s main page doesn’t work, and this seems to be the only page that does (on the site).

the whois info points to a guy named ken, and the link you posted was already posted once in this thread by a guy named ken. sort of a coincidence…

also, a google search returns no other pages from that website."

And then at 7 pm:

“Strange site referred to there. No access to home page or anything other page that I can tell, except for this review, and it doesn’t show up when googling.”

and from another Wooter: "Here are the headers of a request for that page:

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Tue, 03 Jun 2008 00:30:17 GMT (this is the time of my request)
Server: Apache
Last-Modified: Mon, 12 May 2008 22:08:08 GMT (this is the modification time)

(It may be public information, but please do not post it on our forums.)

A Google Search on that address lists many businesses and domain names registered under the same address (see the google search I used here)

This review might be used by this network of websites to sell pool products and might not reflect an objective point of view on the product."

A few minutes later someone writes, “…if you can’t get a replacement cell in the U.S., its only good for a few years. I can’t find anyone who is selling the replacement cell, including the one website mentioned above [that would be Ken Uhle’s place]. I called them and they said they do NOT sell replacement cells.”

It turns out those “many businesses” are discountsaltpool.com, poolbids.com & productreviewsmagazine.com, all registered to Ken Uhle, aka Kendog4, the helpful Wooter that was always right there with the info that no one else seemed able to find. The one who said at 2 am that “they” sell replacement cells, and then told a Wooter over the phone that, no, you’re mistaken.

But there’s more. After 8 days, the units start arriving on people’s doorsteps. Here are some of the comments:

“I just received mine and it looks like carp [I think he means crap]. It was obviously used and scratched all over. It was packaged terribly with just a thin cardboard sheath around the original box. The box was torn and it was partially falling out when Fed-Ex delivered it. The product has scratches and black scuff marks all over it that did not happen in shipping. You can also see where it was connected and disconnected as there are salt deposits on it as well. Did these say they were used or refurbished?”

“I just got mine also. I didn’t have any of the issues that you described, but mine didn’t have the angle connectors.”

"No connectors here either. Mine seemed a little banged up while being shipped (coulda had a better packing job) and the package weighing 26 lbs. I’m surprised with the packaging job it wasn’t worse. As for the 110V connection instructions mine were on the outer box inside the packing list enclosed- maybe check that. Looking at the instructions, I’m not impressed but that one isn’t on Woot. One additional piece of information I noticed someone blackened out the warranty in the back of the manual and I recommend everyone who bought one to fill in the information from Woot’s listing as I have that the warranty for this item is as follows:
Warranty: 2 Years on Power Controller 1 Year Full Warranty on Cell, 4 Years Pro-rated on Cell by Compu-Pool ".

Oh, and the product reviews magazine domain name? It’s for sale for a mere $510 at http://www.iowareview.com/

I guess he was done using it for the Woot sale, huh?

So, with all this, I suppose all that matters is that you guys sold 184 units in 24 hours.

Like I said, I know you won’t publish this comment. But that’s okay, because I’ll just work it up into a piece for my blog. It really is a neat little mini-drama. That’s the funny thing about the internet. Everything you - or in this case, your Texas agent - say hangs around in cyberspace forever.

Good luck with that.

TPG

Just because it’s a conspiracy theory doesn’t mean it’s not true.

THUNDEROUS APPLAUSE!!!

Yea, my thoughts exactly. Talk about targeting the most limited demographic in the history of woot

People are actually buying this. And so far, all of them had at least 25 woots to their name.

How the heck are they affording this?!

I was just about to post that. It looks like he’s somehow affiliated with this woot sale. Not a huge deal and somewhat understandable, but a little shady nonetheless. I see woot’s been deleting comments in here, so mine and yours will probably be deleted soon, too.

If you take the chlorine from salt what remains? Sodium. Sodium in water turns to sodium hydroxide or lye. As more salt is converted, more lye will build up in the water. The salt and the lye are both corrosive to metal, so no wonder the unit has titanium plates in it. But what about any other metal item in the pool? And remember, lye is used in oven cleaners and Drano. Lye eats aluminum. Lye is also corrosive to tissues (flesh). How long will it take to build up to hazardous levels?

Lol - Thanks. I just wanted to make the point that there’s more going on behind the ‘pool scene’ than any of us would have cared to guess. Found that to be highly interesting.

It’s quite curious that kendog4 was the first wooter for this item a year ago, then you have the conspiracy… throw that on top of kendog4 being the first wooter AGAIN? On the same item? Only a year later?

Curious!

Manufacturers website says it has a 7 year warranty…

Wow - this seems uber shady. I wish a w00t god would actually post a response to this.

Hell - what does kendog4 say about this? he has already posted a few times so we all know he is up and reading this.

The conspiracy thickens… Here is a post from the Jun 2008 item at http://www.woot.com/Forums/ViewPost.aspx?PostID=2288854&PageIndex=3&ReplyCount=413#post2289190:

"Here in Arizona, I think it’s pretty much a law that you have a pool in your back yard. Well, not really, but at least 70% of the home have them (our house had one when we moved in). Our kids have pretty sensitive skin, our youngest has flare-ups of excema now and then. When we first moved in, I floated chlorine in the pool and it was a pain in the ass keeping the chemistry right. The following spring I had a salt system installed, these things are awesome. No more skin irritation for the kids, easier on the eyes, and it maintains the chlorine levels well without having to constantly check it. I still do a shock once in a while, add a bag of salt once the levels have gone down from backwashing the filter (not much rain here to dilute the water, and evaporation doesn’t lower your salt levels). You really don’t notice the salt in the water, really. I have a salt-water aquarium so I’m used to the seawater salinity, this is nowhere near that kind of salt water.

I’m tempted to get one of these to replace ours, as our cell has gotten a good bit of calcification and build up over the last two years - it doesn’t “self-clean” like this one says it will. Ours, you actually have to remove the cell and soak it in a diluted acid mix to dissolve the deposits. That doesn’t work to well, so our cell has a lot of buildup that is keeping it from working as well as it should. Might be in for one of these."

This gets shadier by the minute!!

oh my goodness. This is the shadiest woot ever. That and comments are being deleted left and right. The thread has shrunk from 8 pages to 6 lol

I agree. Woot should post a response.

My brother-in-law’s got one, their pool is nicer to swim in now than when he used chlorine. I don’t have a pool yet, but I can bum around his.

Holy jeez! Now that’s what I call a quality post.

And here’s another cookie cutter comment from http://www.woot.com/Forums/ViewPost.aspx?PostID=2288854&PageIndex=3&ReplyCount=413#post2289221

Come on Woot!! Losing trust with me for sure.

Great for the enviornment and better for your body…alternative is not user friendly