I'm sorry but I fail to understand his reasoning. The "opening" is to remove the cover, (already done) take out the drain plugs, run the equipment. In other words' he'd have to run the equipment to run the equipment
Looks to me like his reasoning is something along the lines of "pay Me to drain the pool and do an acid wash."
So, if you want the pool open, dont want or have time to do it yourself, it will be faster/easier/more expensive to do it his way. Perhaps with imminent parenthood, this is actually the better plan.
What the pool guy CAN'T do is open and recover the water the way we would tell YOU to do it, because and hourly pool guy can not be there night and day to test th water, maintain shock level using bleach, backwashing filter whenever it needs it in the beginning, etc. He can only really do it "his way" -- a sustained number of hours to work on it in one shot and working with clean water.
A bbb approach requires short bouts of attention and observation, so perhaps less time overall, but over a longer time period. Make sense?
So if you're willing to take it on once you deliver, just tell him pure and simple to open the pool and that he can repair the pumps and leave the water to you to clean up. Ask him to put in some jack's magic and
polyquat 60 but not to add any "shock" or anything else.
Alternately, if you can live with the expense, have him do the drain and acid wash and call it done. You can study up on bbb later when you're home with the baby, and we'll help ya then