I add my salt by dumping a partial bag at a time in the big leaf net suspended over the pool's edge in front of a return. The current from the return speeds up the dissolving process and makes sure I don't have any salt just sitting on the bottom of the pool.

As keithw states, be sure the salt is pure...no iron or other additives in it. Mine's called Morton's solar salt and comes in a blue bag, also from HD or Lowe's and same price range.

You probably could start even lower, maybe 900-1200ppm, and see how it feels to you. If you get up to 2700-3400ppm....well, that happens to be the range recommended for some SWCGs, so you may want to consider adding one and making that salt go to work for you!

My pool builder was emphatic that I should not add chlorine to my salt water pool. As I recall he said the chlorine and salt would damage the plaster. Before you add salt I would research this issue very carefully. Why don't you just bite the bullet and install a SWG? For what it will cost you will have a much better pool and a lot less work.

Thanks for all the replies. Any experts out there regarding the long term damage to plaster from mixing salt and chlorine?
I don't want to do anything to damage my pool!

NOT an expert... but a salt water pool owner...

Salt water pools have chlorine in them - it is produced by the SWG instead of being added by an inline or floating chlorinator. Chlorine is chlorine, regardless of how it gets into the pool.

Ok maybe I'm misunderstanding the posting, but how is adding salt to a pool going to "soften" the water? Without a SWG, adding salt directly to a pool is going to do nothing but make salt water.
You need some sort of mechanism to take the hardness ion (usually Ca to swap with the Na ion to make the water soft".
Adding salt directly to the water won't have that effect. Chlorine is chlorine and these two won't interact in any way without some sort of activator.

I don't think the water is actually softer (in the chemical sense). But a lot of people report that the water "feels" softer.

Exacly right, whodini. Adding salt will not soften the water - but increasing the salinity closer to body tissues makes it feel more comfortable. It is by no means soft water, though.... just nicer feeling.

Thanks for all the responses. Still unsure about adding a SWG or just adding salt. I am trying to keep my budget in line so i really dont want to add too much things this late in the game. How feasible is it to add the SWG later on?

It's not a big deal to add later.

Kekoa, you can add a salt chrlorine generator at any point in time. I can tell you first hand it makes a big difference. I've only been here on Kauai for a few months, but all the pools I built in nevada the last four years had salt systems with very few problems. I retro-fitted one on my own pool and man what a difference.

That`s what I did,added salt for a few months before I
got a SWG.This was on my first pool.Completely SOLD on
salt system.
When I first added the salt(a few bags, maybe 2000 ppm),
my wife,whom I hadn`t yet told about the salt yet,kept
remarking how wonderful the water felt the first time she
got in pool with the salt.
A SWG is a must have for any home pool!
JR....

The salt is only there to provide sodium chloride so the chlorine generator can make chlorine. Putting salt in your pool will do nothing unless you have a generator to do something with it. It works like this.....salt is sodium chloride. Liquid chlorine (Chlorox or bleach) is sodium hypochlorite. Saltwater chlorine generators turn the sodium chloride (salt) into sodium hypochlorite (chlorine. The water is softer and you will notice a big diffrence in the feel of your skin and hair after you dry off. The salt won't damage your pool, but wait about 2 weeks to put it in the pool if the plaster is new.

Thanks for all the replies. Finally decided to pay the xtra money for the SWG. From all the replies, it seems that it will be a worthwhile investment.

We paid $1000 for a SWG, had 3 repairs under warrantee, spent $300 replacing motherboard when out of warranty, spent another $100 on another part and now the display doesn't work. We are abandoning it and going back to the old-fashioned chlorine. It's a shame because the water felt and smelt nicer to swim in but just far too expensive with ongoing costs of repairs.