Hi All,

I have been lurking here for a while. There is an amazing amount of info to read. Will be ordering a test kit here soon and starting to get ready for our second season with a pool. We moved into our home in May and the previous owners had their pool guy open it for us. We did that the first week of May. I travel a bunch for work and thought it would be easier to have the guy keep taking care of it.
Having the "pool guy" take care of the pool was so much more expensive that I thought. Yikes!!

We had one period here at the end of the summer where it got away from him, got cloudy and it cost me quite a bit to clear it up.

Needless to say I was pretty sour on the whole pool thing by fall. I have a ray of hope now that I have spent some time reading here.

One thing I haven't seen directly is if you leave for a week or so how difficult is it to get the pool back in balance? How whacked out can it get in a week? If my wife wants to take off for the week how big a deal is it?

Going to start stocking up on supplies and will open the pool probably in the first week of May. Looking forward to having a better grip on our own destiny this year.

Thanks

Phil

Welcome to the forum.

Once you get an understanding of the chemistry, perhaps the most rewarding thing is knowing you can ALWAYS get it back into shape.....usually pretty painlessly.

Typical 1 week without care problem will be how to keep the chlorine replenished in your pool. There are several preventative things you can do depending on how you chlorinate. You may be able to search "vacation" here on the forum and get some ideas. I won't go into any specifics unless you want to pursue it further now but you can be assured that a fairly brief absence from your pool is not a big issue.

Thanks for the welcome. Sometimes you just need a hint. The word vacation was the one I needed and I found a bunch of info.

Thank You

Phil

Once you have control of your pool, it's not a big deal to leave it. You can use a floater with pucks if your CYA level is not already high, or do what I did last year. I had the water balanced already, so I drove the pH down a little more to allow for the usual rise, loaded it with chlorine, and put a floating cover on it to keep the UV off the chlorine. It was fine when I got back.

Depends on when you go, too. Right now my pool would maintain itself for well over a week, because the water is so cold. Get back into the 100+ weather and water in the high 80s, and it's a different story.

Automating chlorine additions by going with a Liquidator or salt water chlorine generator will pretty much remove this worry as well. I travel a lot so finding automation was a necessity for me.

Haven't crossed this road myself but I would anticipate adding extra dosage of bleach the night before, or morning of, and keep the cover on till return, then when return probably have a large dosage to add, should be ok though.

If your like me and have an above ground pump on a timer, you may want to touch base with a neighbor and show them where the shut off is, in case a connection blows.