Pool Salt Calculator: How Much Salt Do You Need to Add?

Written by Michael Dean

calculating how much salt to put in a swimming pool

You’re probably here because your salt chlorine generator told you that the salt levels in your pool were too high or too low. Luckily, adding salt or replacing water in your pool is a pretty simple process. I’ll walk you through:

Ready? Let’s get started.

What’s the Right Level of Salt For Your Pool?

The optimal range for salt in your pool is 2,700-3,400 ppm (parts per million), with 3,200 ppm being ideal.

What’s parts per million mean? It’s just a scientific unit of measurement, but don’t worry, you don’t need to know the ins and outs of ppm. The only thing you need to do is test your pool water to get a reading of the current salt ppm levels.

How Do You Test Your Salt Levels?

It’s pretty simple. Your salt chlorine generator should give you a reading for how much salt is currently in your pool. However, if you don’t have that reading, you can use a salt testing kit to get an accurate measurement. Once you’ve done that, you’ll know if you’re above or below the ideal salt range that I mentioned above. If you’re above it, you’ll need to replace your current pool water with new water. If you’re below it, you add more salt.

Calculating Pool Volume

Before you can know how much salt to add or water to replace, you have to know how much water is currently in your pool. Use our pool volume calculator below, and then we’ll move on to dialing in the right salt levels.


Okay, all set? Let’s move on to the salt calculations.

Calculating How Much Salt to Add

Use the calculator below to figure out how much salt to add or water to replace in your pool. All you need to do is plug in your pool volume (which you calculated above) and your current salt levels (which you tested for) and hit “calculate.” I already plugged in the ideal salt level of 3,200 ppm, but if you feel strongly that you want it to be lower or higher, you can adjust it as needed.


And it’s as simple as that!

Salt Water Pool Maintenance

Here is more of our research to help you confidently maintain your salt water pool.

Questions? Shoot me a message, and I’ll be glad to help.

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