AquaLit
Pool Care & Automation
Keep the chlorine pool you already have — and stop being the part of it that has to remember.
Yes, a traditional chlorine pool can be automated, and for many owners it is the better choice. Sensors measure the water, a controller decides when correction is needed, and metering pumps dose liquid chlorine and acid from tanks at the equipment pad. Nothing about the pool itself changes — no salt, no conversion, no new water chemistry to learn.
The important distinction: a tablet feeder feeds chlorine on a mechanical setting whether the pool needs it or not. Sensor-driven dosing responds to what the water is actually doing.
An inline chlorinator such as a Pentair 320 dissolves trichlor tablets into the return line. It is semi-automatic delivery — genuinely useful, and the baseline most Houston-area pools start from.
This is where automation starts, not where it ends. A feeder cannot tell the difference between a cool quiet week and a hot weekend with eight people in the pool.
Monitoring is the cheapest meaningful upgrade and the one we most often recommend first. Once you can see pH, sanitizer activity and temperature over time, you can tell whether you have a chemistry problem or a circulation problem.
At this stage a person still makes the adjustments. You have replaced guessing with knowing, which is worth doing on its own.
A liquid chlorine tank and a metering pump, triggered by the controller when sanitizer activity falls below your target. This is the point at which the pool genuinely starts looking after itself between visits.
Adding a muriatic acid tank and a second metering pump means the two corrections that matter most are both handled. Sanitizer and pH stop drifting apart between service visits.
| Tablet feeder | Salt system | Sensor-driven dosing | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Responds to real demand | No | Only via a fixed output % | Yes |
| Handles pH | No | No — and pH tends to rise | Yes, with acid dosing |
| Adds cyanuric acid | Yes, with trichlor | No | No |
| Up-front cost | Lowest | Higher | Higher |
| Consumables | Tablets | Salt, then a cell | Liquid chlorine and acid |
| Chemical handling for you | Loading tablets | Occasional salt | Periodic tank refills |
| Gives you data | No | Limited | Yes |
None of these ends water testing. Probes drift, and alkalinity, calcium hardness and CYA are not measured by typical automation at all.
No. This is the single most common misconception we hear. Salt is a way of producing chlorine, not a prerequisite for automation. A conventional chlorine pool with sensors, a controller and metering pumps is arguably more automated than a basic salt pool, because it responds to measurement rather than running at a fixed output.
The 320 is a delivery device. It dissolves tablets at a rate you set and keeps doing that regardless of conditions. An automated dosing system is a control system: it measures sanitizer activity and pH, then doses only when the water asks for it.
One is a tap. The other is a thermostat.
A small metering pump — usually peristaltic — that injects a precise, controlled volume of liquid chlorine or acid into the return plumbing. It is interlocked with circulation so it cannot dose into still water.
Dosing for that chemical stops and the water begins to drift. Good installations include level monitoring or a scheduled refill so this is caught before it shows in the pool. Chemical replenishment is part of what we handle for service customers.
When installed correctly, yes. Correct tank siting, chemically compatible tubing and fittings, proper injection points, flow interlocks and sane controller limits all matter — as does keeping chlorine and acid physically separated.
This is not a DIY installation. Both chemicals are hazardous, and the system must be built so a single sensor fault cannot cause runaway dosing.
For most Houston-area pools we recommend starting at Stage 2. Measurement is inexpensive, tells you whether you actually have a chemistry problem, and makes every later decision better informed.
Move to Stage 3 and 4 when the pool is genuinely unattended for stretches, when demand swings hard through summer, or when you simply want the chemical handling out of your life. If your only goal is convenience and you do not care about the data, salt chlorination may suit you better — we will say so.
Call or text for a free pool assessment. We look at the pool, the equipment already on your pad and how you actually use the backyard — then tell you what is worth doing and what is not.
Tell us what you have and how you use the pool. We'll walk the equipment pad, ask what you ultimately want controlled, and give you an honest recommendation — including the upgrades we'd skip.