Filter for Pool- Sand, Salt Water, or Standard Chlorine Chemical

Both systems still use chemicals. The salt systems do not use chlorine, it produces it. The sand, which is what we have does need chlorine. We were going to go with salt because we thought it didn't use any chemicals but after researching it uses everything but the chlorine.

I will tell you that we have the Intex 48x16 and yeah, the chemicals are a challenge with the cartridge filter that comes with it. We had algae blooms every time we went out of town for a couple days. We got the larger sand filter three years ago and if I forget to do the chemicals nothing happens. Forget to clean one day, all good.

Apparently the key to a relaxing pool is having the right sized filter and what they sell with those pools just doesn't work.
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Oh and so far as the life of one of those pools, this is the fifth summer with this pool and structurally there is not a darn thing wrong with it. At this rate it is going to be around until the kids get bored with it and I get my hot tub to replace it! :)
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Oh yeah, if you are talking the Intex pools, the cheapest place we found the filter was on Amazon but we have prime, not sure what the shipping would have been otherwise. Then again they will give you prime free for a month.

I'd honestly recommend getting a metal frame above ground. They are semi expensive depending on what size but you won't need to replace but every 10 or so years

I stayed at a hotel that had salt water and I broke out in hives from something living in the water....yuck.

I recommend you investigate soft swim of some other sort of treatment for the water. We had it in the in-ground pool at the home where I was a nanny. I tell you! Those kids came out with super soft hair, their swimsuits were soft and never faded, and even my dry skin stayed soft and nice from the water.

It's like being in a bathtub full of super soft water. It was nice.

We have the intex 18' pool and I bought the saltwater system. It uses salt and a ph balancer, depending on your reading but I haven't needed anything else. The one thing I did differently is to let the filter run a couple hours longer than the manufacturer suggests. It was worth it to me to do this. What I love about it is that your eyes don't get irritated when swimming.

My parents had an in-ground pool put in back in '72 and it had a sand filter system - like Jo said, you still use chemicals. Due to their ages trying to keep it maintained and some issues developing cause of the age of the construction, the pool was caved in about 2 years ago - but it was there almost 40 years! When all the chemicals were balanced - that water was cleaner than what comes out of many taps!

(getting it fixed would have cost much more than caving it - too much would have had to have been back dug out on the side with issues)

Turnip explained sand and salt pretty well. We have an inground pool and a sand filter, and a few years ago when salt was becoming the new popular choice, we thought maybe we'd missed the boat. So I went into the pool store and asked some very pointed questions.

Turns out, salt pools do exactly what Turnip said... they do still need chemicals, but they make their own chlorine... what is salt after all, but sodium chloride? Anyway... the difference is (best I can explain it simply) that with a salt pool, you have a very expensive electronic board that manages the chemical reactions and they are temperamental. They burn out and when they do, nothing works until you fix them. A "typical" fix for the electronics end is in the multi-hundreds of dollars... like $500 average EACH TIME. We've had sand for going into our 8th summer now, and haven't really needed ANY repairs. Friends we know who went salt, have already had at least 2 different repairs, that were nothing more than an electronics failure that cost around $500 each time.

Hope this helps.