Hand-dosing liquid chlorine vs a peristaltic feeder, still weighing it

can't answer from experience running one, still just hand dosing here, but the sawtooth thing you're describing is basically my whole life right now too so following this thread close. my FC does the same 3 to 6 bounce and honestly the part that annoys me isn't the dosing itself, it's that i can't dose right after work because the pool's still hot and slammed with sun till like 6pm, so it just sits low most of the afternoon whether i want it to or not.

feels like a feeder would fix the timing problem more than the labor problem for me, since jugging chlorine at night only takes a couple minutes anyway. curious if anyone running one has had it overshoot on high bather load days though, seems like it'd just keep dosing at whatever rate you set it regardless of what's actually eating the chlorine that day.

Swamp_tyler is right that a feeder wont know a birthday party is happening and adjust itself, ours is salt so I dont deal with the jug at all but I remember before we switched the same afternoon low was my problem too. The thing that would worry me about a feeder more than overshoot is undershoot on a slammed pool day, if you set the rate for a normal Tuesday and then ten kids show up it just keeps trickling along oblivious while your FC craters, so youd still be out there testing and topping up by hand anyway on the busy days. Kind of feels like it smooths out the boring days and youre still babysitting the exact days you wanted help with.

I went round and round on this same question a couple years back and ended up staying with the jug, mainly because Dana's right about the busy day problem, my worst FC crashes were always the Saturdays we had six grandkids in the pool all afternoon and no feeder set for a normal Tuesday was going to save me from that, I'd still be out there testing and dumping extra in by hand regardless. So for me it wasn't worth adding another pump to maintain just to smooth out the boring days when the hard days needed babysitting either way.

yeah that undershoot thing dana mentioned actually happened to me last month without a feeder even in the mix, had a bunch of people over and just kept testing every couple hours instead of my usual once at night, FC dropped way faster than i expected and i ended up dosing basically double what i normally would just to keep it from crashing by the time everyone left. so even hand dosing i was already doing the "babysit the busy days separately" thing chuck's talking about, the feeder wouldnt have changed that part at all, i still would ve had to eyeball it and dump extra in by hand. kinda makes me think the feeder's only real win for me would be not having to remember the jug on the boring nights, which tbh only takes a couple minutes anyway like i said. not sure that's worth calibrating a whole extra pump for.

Everyone's nailed the actual math problem here, a feeder is a constant mL/min against a bather load that's anything but constant, so it's solving the wrong variable. FC demand tracks UV and swimmer count, not time of day, and no peristaltic setup knows the difference between an empty pool and six grandkids. Jug plus testing on the busy days is honestly the more correct control loop even if it feels less elegant.