Putting in new pool - Should I go UV Light or Saline system for least maintenance?

Go with salt my pool has never turned green. If u design it right u will have zero maintenance.

HoTiCE_ wrote: ↑ We're about to put in a new in-ground pool at the end of the summer. For the purification/cleaning system, I'm being asked to pick between UV lightning vs saline system (classic chlorine is out of the question) as we want the least maintenance required especially when we are out of town.

Saline System
PRO:
-Much less maintenance than classic chlorine systems.
-Can go out of town for a week without your pool turning green

CON:
-Not good for environment. In fact, there are rumours Montreal might ban this in the next couple of years but merely rumours at this point.


UV Light:
Pro:
-No Environmental impact

Con:
-Have to change the lights every 2-3 years.



For those of you that have either, care to chime in and tell us about your experience? Costs?

Thanks!

Any idea what the UV lights cost to run? Or how much they cost to replace? If the cost of salt = electricity + bulb replacement, then UV seems like the obvious answer (of those two choices).

As for saline systems: they are not "much less maintenance" than classic chlorine systems; this is definitely false. My family had a pool for around 25 years, and I did "all" of the maintenance on it after I turned ~10; I checked levels ~every 2 weeks, and added chemicals accordingly. We had an auto-chlorinator, which I expect is garbage compared to what is available today, and zero times did that pool go green on my watch. Essentially, I "went away for 2 weeks at a time" throughout the summer, and the auto-chlorinator did it's job. Checking levels and dumping chemicals took about 5 minutes tops ... so about 1 hour of maintenance / year (being generous; probably more like 30 minutes).

Salt water or nothing....

My understanding is that UV systems are not meant to stand alone - you still need salt, bromine, chlorine, etc. So, UV lights would allow you to lower the chlorine setting on your salt system and that would extend the life of the salt cell and the vinyl liner. On the latter, our salt cells last 4 years but we keep our pool open 5 months a year. When we change our liner, we might add a uv unit to our system

I chose UV over salt, not sure if I'd do it again.

I like the ease of salt, but salt water is more corrosive and will likely take a couple years off your pool equipment.

I'm not convinced my UV does much.

I'd either go with salt, or neither. Just use good ol' liquid chlorine. With UV you need to use chlorine anyways.