Installing a pool salt chlorinator yourself, either for inground pool or for above ground pool, is fairly simple. If you are confortable with pool plumbing and you can assemble two pieces of pipes together, you should be able to install a salt chlorinator to your pool without problem.
The salt chlorinator system (Hayward Aqua-rite and Hayward Swimpure modes used as a reference here) is composed of 3 parts:
- The Turbo Cell
- The Control box
- The flow switch
All you need to do is install the Turbo Cell and the flow switch in the return water circuit. In short, it should be the last element of your system before the water is returned to the pool. This will be at the output of the pool heater if you have one, or at the output of the filter otherwise.
The flow switch is installed immediately after the Turbo Cell and is needed in order to detect whether the water if flowing or not and stop the chlorine generation in the later case.
Once the Turbo Cell and the flow switch are installed, the wire on it should be connected to the Control box.
Once everything is installed, you simply need to add salt to the pool. The initial quantity of salt needed is determined by the pool volume and the salt chlorinator recommendation. Once the inial quantity of salt has been added, fine tuning can be done by reading the salt level reported by the control box and adjustments can be made by adding small quantity at a time and waiting 24 hours in between.
As for the type of salt to use, cheap water softener salt can be used. Read
Type of Salt ised in salt chlorinated pool for more information.