Aquarite Hayward Salt Cell failure T-5- Taken apart

Crap design. Thank you for making this video.

Very insightful breakdown of the cell, thank you. I have a salt cell sensor fault on my board. Is that sensor inside the cell the sensor that has gone bad?

Thank you for doing this. Very, very educational and enlightening. Revealed a lot of mystery for me. Thanks again!

Thank you for this. I've gone through two of these. Can the sensor be replaced?

planned obsolescence is the word you were looking for I think.

My Salt Pool Store replacement failed within 60 days and I returned it for a warranty replacement.. I have had the Salt Pool Store send a replacement and it been working perfect for over a year!!!

Thanks for this Beach, I was unaware that the U cover could be removed by hand. The area where the nuts are are definitely a weak link that could cause all kinds of errors and poor operation. I will add that the heat sensor doesn't need to be cut off to gain full access, the power wire can be separated from the U cover.... it has a U shaped flexible cord cover that slides off.

I understand your frustrations. After almost 4 years I'm replacing my T5 cell which worked well. I am going to pull mine apart and see what's going on in there. I am ordering another one from Blue Works instead of a T5 I am installing a T15 which should last longer.

So the cheap cell failed in 60 days... Great info, maybe put that in the description of your other video, I was wondering how the cheap cell would do.... sad it failed so quickly

What do you recommend for salt

Can someone tell me what's the best salt generator to buy for the money

You kept repeating "stupid design" and you don't know the difference between a diode and a resistor. If you barely have attended the kindergarten, you are the last person on this planet that can comment on any kind of circuit design. You are too much ignorant to understand what's inside that cell. With those dirty hands I would recommend to do garden stuff.

These things are the biggest pieces of shit. I see them fail constantly, usually only after a couple of years. Salt water pools are the biggest scam in the industry. If it's not the reoccurring cost of the salt cell, or the control panel (which has a common thermistor failure) it will be the eventual cost of replacing ALL of your pool equipment when it rusts away. Hayward makes these systems just cheap enough for them to be sold in mass, this is why they are the most popular and you see them used in most installations.
The higher end Pentair, Jandy etc... do not fail as rapidly, but again it's only a matter of time before the salt water eats away at everything, and believe me the swimming pool industry knows this that's why they push this garbage.
Fun fact, generating chlorine with a salt water system was actually they way they did it back in the 50's during the boom of swimming pool installations, mostly in California etc... They moved away from this for the exact reason I just mentioned. Salt water destroys EVERYTHING. As chemical manufacturing became more cost effective and readily available it did not make sense to keep chlorinating pools this way.
They even had companies that would come to your house and pump chlorine gas in to the pool weekly. (Look up how deadly chlorine gas is, and you can imagine why this fell out of practice. )
Another fun thing is that apparently the metals used to coat the titanium plates (ruthenium oxide or iridium) are mined in Ukraine... well guess what... Ukrainian industry isn't doing so well at the moment so it's going to be a while before you can ever get one of these again. As of summer 2022 the cost for a new salt cell alone ranges from $800 to over $1000

Thanks for the disassembled view.
Looking at this I feel like I can reverse engineer some of this to make it work indefinitely.

I’ve replaced a few 45k gal cells over the years.

If you simply found a resistor to mimic what the temp sensor sees at say 75-85F then you could eliminate that part of the circuit.

Replacement generic cells have the job used harness wires blocked and capped at the board connector.

Re-water proofing the black and white connections after a thorough dry out should be the ticket as long as the plates are in good condition (chemistry control is prime).

I have a few old ones lying around. I guess I need to get to work.

The most common component to fail on these units is the Thermistor that is inside the Cell that is shown in the video. The Thermistor is used to determine the water temp and salt level. If the Thermistor fails, you will more then likely get a "HOT" error on your panel. If you check the Molex connector, pins 6 and 10 connect to the blue and red wires. You can use a multimeter to check the resistance and continuity. The resistance should be around 10K ohm, +- 2K ohm depending on your temp. If you see reading that are way too high or low then your Thermistor is cooked. The easiest fix is to slice the power cord cable sheathing and expose the wires. The blue and red are the ones you need to work on. Cut the wires and solder a 10K ohm resistor between the red and blue wire that are facing the Molex connector. Give the unit a test and the error should be gone. Tape everything backup up with some electrical tape and you are done. The 10K ohm resistor has the control panel think that the water temp is 77F. Fixed my unit this way and it works perfectly. One dollar resistor and 2mins of soldering saved me $1000 for a new unit...

Thank you for sharing
These salt cells are meant to last 5 years so Hayward can make more money. I opened mine and found a lot of brown hard deposit between the two poles. Can’t fix it. So I’ll suck it up and buy another one

Thanks Beach for the education. I’m having the same problem with mine as many here has also experienced.

does the thermistor there for water temperature in general or for the cell overheating?

Brother!, you are my kind of guy. I like your planned obsolesce comment with the heat sensor. I have a T-Cell 15 that is still working, but I know someday it will fail. If it did tomorrow $900+tax to get a new one. Can you tell me if you think these are actually repairable, and what is it that fails when these fail?

Great video! Thanks so much for posting this. I have repaired two cells so far because of your video.🙂🙂

Today 2023 that t-cell is $900

What did you use to cut open the cell? Looks like you did a clean cut.

10k ohm resistor, I took what was mentioned and measured the resistance on the cell plug for the red and blue wires and got around 8.2 k ohms and as a last ditch effort, I carefully sliced and pulled back two inches of the sleeve cut the red and blue and soldered in a 10k resistor. As a result, the system thinks the water temp is 77 degrees. It is actually 84. Prior to this, My cell, T-9 would not hold the instant salt reading and would drop to zero. now, I can take a instant salt reading and lock in 3300 for salt and it doesn't drop. The problem is the plates are probably worn where I get 27 VDC and 2.5 amps draw on the display. It would be cool if I could go further and know if replacing the plates would restore full operation.

are all the wires connected inside or just blue red and white and black ...other are just sitting there ???

How do you seal the extra wires. Did you silicone those too?

Great video thank you. Sir how the heck did you manage to take that epoxy out where the 2 screws are?

They are designed to be replaced. The cells wear out. When you clean it make sure the plug end is up and not submerged. It is possible for acid to get in but rare. $650 now

☆☆☆☆☆ Video

Mine reads cold. Pin 6 and 10 read 11k ohms. I'm not sure what's going on. Any advice?

Couldn't be said better. FYI, there's a YT about bypass that heat sensor to deal with the "HOT" error. Easy and smart.

So if not for that poor design on the temp probe how long would the plates last in a perfect world? The plates do wear down eventually?

My pool is 36500 gallons so the cell does run 12 hours with the pump. It runs at 70 percent. My cya is 30 so minimum ppm would 30x7.5% =2.25ppm

Single speed pump 25 years old. Rebuilt 2 times. Still kicking ass. Our electricity is not expensive in Pennsylvania. And I have an attic pool heater I put in 24 years ago to heat the pool that requires high speed to get water to the attic. I guess I am in sticker shock at the price of the T-15 cells. I bought my last one on 2016 with a 5 year warranty for 450 bucks.

You would to just happen to know which pins on the chlorinator plug were the red and blue wires?

Is there a way to test the cell plates? the two wires? Im looking into buying used cell dirt cheap on ebay listed as "for parts". Im hoping that a potentiometer might be the key. Is there a way to test the cells or tell by looking at pictures if its a good cell to buy?

what is the size of the middle pipe? is it 3" or 4" ?? can we glue a coupling after cutting the cell?