So I've been a faithful follower of TFP since we bought our house with a vinyl-liner pool 7 years ago, and knock on wood, in those 7 years I only had one funky chemical issue when I was traveling for work and my wife didn't put any chemicals in and I ended up with CYA reducing bacteria.
Since then we've bought a cabin, that we periodically go to during the summer that is a fair distance away from our house. The last couple of trips I've had a neighbor handle the chemicals, which they did alright but missed a couple of days but it wasn't hard to recover from.
Longer term I feel like I can't keep asking my neighbors though, so I've been considering converting to a SWG. My pool service guy (I use for major repairs, opening, and closing just because they can do those things better and faster than I can) isn't a fan because the older vinyl pools weren't designed for salt and salt is corrosive. His concern is its harder on the metal walls (I'm not sure I buy that unless there is a vinyl leak), the anchors for the ladders, the metal coping, and reduces the life of the liner overall.
So I'd love to get some thoughts here on:
1. Has anyone else converted an old vinyl liner pool to SWG and had any issues?
2. What have you done when you travel (1 to 2 weeks at a time) to keep things fairly balanced.
One thought I have is to get a float with CalHypo tablets and tie it between the two loops use for hooking the float rope across, that way it stays towards the middle of the pool, and I can hook up the hose to a pool sentry to make sure the water levels stay good. And then maybe I can reduce the amount of times the neighbors have to do something to once or twice.
Since then we've bought a cabin, that we periodically go to during the summer that is a fair distance away from our house. The last couple of trips I've had a neighbor handle the chemicals, which they did alright but missed a couple of days but it wasn't hard to recover from.
Longer term I feel like I can't keep asking my neighbors though, so I've been considering converting to a SWG. My pool service guy (I use for major repairs, opening, and closing just because they can do those things better and faster than I can) isn't a fan because the older vinyl pools weren't designed for salt and salt is corrosive. His concern is its harder on the metal walls (I'm not sure I buy that unless there is a vinyl leak), the anchors for the ladders, the metal coping, and reduces the life of the liner overall.
So I'd love to get some thoughts here on:
1. Has anyone else converted an old vinyl liner pool to SWG and had any issues?
2. What have you done when you travel (1 to 2 weeks at a time) to keep things fairly balanced.
One thought I have is to get a float with CalHypo tablets and tie it between the two loops use for hooking the float rope across, that way it stays towards the middle of the pool, and I can hook up the hose to a pool sentry to make sure the water levels stay good. And then maybe I can reduce the amount of times the neighbors have to do something to once or twice.