Some of what these contractors say makes sense, some doesn’t.

Eye irritation: saline water is slightly easier on your eyes than regular old pool water. However that benefit can be canceled out if the pool water’s pH rides above the desired range (pH of the human eye is about 7.4). I f you keep a close watch on the pH, then, yeah, a salt pool will give you less red-eye than a regular pool. Either way, though, I’d recommend you get a good pair of swim goggles for the kids. Even saline water, with stuff like chloramines in it, can be irritating.

Soft water: yes, a salt pool does have softer water, no doubt about it.

Bleached suits: sorry to say, but your suits will bleach out just the same as if you were using any other form of chlorine. See, the desired form of chlorine that ends up in the water, hypochlorous acid (HOCl), is there whether you use a salt water chlorine generator, dump in old-fashioned liquid chlorine, use tablets or shock, or even if you have some guy to come in and inject chlorine gas into the pool. Same end product. No matter the source. So, of course, your suits will bleach out the same.

Green hair: not very common these days. It’s caused by copper ions in the water. And in the old days there were copper pipes, or maybe just heat sinks in and out of the heater, plus the copper in the heater’s heat exchanger. Flow rates above about seven feet per second erode the copper, putting it in suspension in the water. It reacts with oxidizers … blah, blah, blah. The end result is everyone’s hair absorbs some of the copper chlorides or oxides, which are greenish. It’s more noticeable in blond hair. Anyway, there is much less copper in pools nowadays, so we don’t have as much problem with green hair. It’s not something caused — or alleviated — by salt systems, though. My blond-haired kids are on a swim team, spending hours and hours in chlorinated water every week, but we have zero green hair issues.

Well, I guess you gotta just take what some sales people tell you with a grain of salt (pun).