How / When to Close - Will be away for entire September.

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malimited

Active member
Apr 9, 2024
34
North NJ
I think the title pretty much says it all but let me explain.

My pool builder literally finished today which is August 20th, this includes fully opening the pool, which I guess is considered extremely late in the season . From what I'm reading about closing the pool on this forum, it's best to wait when the water temperature is consistently in the late '60s. I'm also going away in 2 weeks and I'll be away for the entire month of September. So when I get back it'll be October.

A couple of questions:

  1. What should I do to the pool while I'm away. Should I just keep the VSP going 24/7 at low speed, should I put a cover on it while the equipment runs?
  2. Should I close it before I leave or when I return?
  3. Something else?

Thanks for all the help, never owned a pool of my life. Been on these forums and it's really helped me out but just don't know what to do in this situation.
 
What kind of cover ?

I'd 'soft close' and leave the equipment running under the cover. With a tarp style cover you'd need to aim the returns down so they didn't push the tarp.

Bring it to SLAM under the cover, set the SWG to a low setting and you'll probably still have FC left when you return. UV demand falls off a cliff here in early Sept.
 
Newdude said:
What kind of cover ?

I'd 'soft close' and leave the equipment running under the cover. With a tarp style cover you'd need to aim the returns down so they didn't push the tarp.

Bring it to SLAM under the cover, set the SWG to a low setting and you'll probably still have FC left when you return. UV demand falls off a cliff here in early Sept.
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I have a safety cover....I don't even have my pavers yet, so I was thinking about holding it with sandbags until pavers are done around October.
 
malimited said:
I was thinking about holding it with sandbags until pavers are done around October.
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Safety covers are heavy as snot if they aren't pulled tight (dry). Even if you somehow stretched it ok, the first rain would make it just as wet as if it sat on the water the whole time. Then it'd be sitting on the water.

Are you just going away or is the whole family ? If you had anyone around who could test twice a week, we could walk you through walking them through some occasional swg tweaks. There's a very wide margin of error between 5 and 28 FC so once it was free and clear away from the 5, it could run wild for the most part.

We could stretch the test intervals once we saw how it was responding.
 
Cover the pool before you leave and keep the pump and SWG running.

The cover will keep debris and falling leaves out of the pool and skimmer which will begin soon.

You need to cover the pool before you leave and find the correct SWG % setting for the covered pool. Otherwise your chlorine will likely be sky high after a month covered.

What model Hayward cell do you have?

What is your current SWG % and pump runtime?
 
Newdude said:
Safety covers are heavy as snot if they aren't pulled tight (dry). Even if you somehow stretched it ok, the first rain would make it just as wet as if it sat on the water the whole time. Then it'd be sitting on the water.

Are you just going away or is the whole family ? If you had anyone around who could test twice a week, we could walk you through walking them through some occasional swg tweaks. There's a very wide margin of error between 5 and 28 FC so once it was free and clear away from the 5, it could run wild for the most part.

We could stretch the test intervals once we saw how it was responding.
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The whole family is leaving. I'm terms of the safety cover, since the pavers aren't done yet, I guess I could drive some rebar into the ground and latch the safety cover to the rebar
 
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ajw22 said:
Cover the pool before you leave and keep the pump and SWG running.

The cover will keep debris and falling leaves out of the pool and skimmer which will begin soon.

You need to cover the pool before you leave and find the correct SWG % setting for the covered pool. Otherwise your chlorine will likely be sky high after a month covered.

What model Hayward cell do you have?

What is your current SWG % and pump runtime?
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Does the picture help?
 

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malimited said:
Ok...still learning:). The SWG is set to 60% and I have my pump running at 1200 rpm 24/7 so far, but it's literally only been 24 hours since my pool was officially completed and turned on.
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That setting is giving you 4.8ppm of FC per day.

Check your FC daily. Your FC is probably rising depending on your CYA.

My pool needs about 3PPM per day in North Jersey with CYA 70.

60% will be way high with the cover on and as we get into fall. You probably will not need more then 1PPM per day which would be a 13% setting.

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The TFpro salt from TFtestkits.net is cheaper than the K2006C salt. (Barring an incredible sale on the Taylor kit)

Even then, the TFpro (salt or regular) has a nicer case, a $48 stirrer and the reagents are appropriately sized for how we roll. With the K2006C you'll be replacing the FC test while throwing out old TA and CH reagents that are mostly full

The TFpro salt or the regular Tfpro for LC folks is a slam dunk.
 
I think I would cover the pool with a trap type cover and water bags (a one time use). Leave the pump and equipment running. Just need to figure out the SWG to keep it from getting to high. You could get it to SLAM level and leave it covered and be likely be fine. A solid trap cover should keep all the light out and have minimal chlorine usage. you could leave it covered till the paver work starts.

Getting the pavers done in October is probably going to allow a fair bit of leaves and other debris getting into the pool. If you can keep the pump and SWG running or use chlorine (might not be warm enough for the SWG to work) going to keep the pool from turning green will help to allow you to close the pool in a clean state after the pavers are done.
 
Newdude said:
The TFpro salt from TFtestkits.net is cheaper than the K2006C salt. (Barring an incredible sale on the Taylor kit)

Even then, the TFpro (salt or regular) has a nicer case, a $48 stirrer and the reagents are appropriately sized for how we roll. With the K2006C you'll be replacing the FC test while throwing out old TA and CH reagents that are mostly full

The TFpro salt or the regular Tfpro for LC folks is a slam dunk.
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Should I get any optional items?
 

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Normally newbs are testing alot more to learn their pool and how it responds so I reccomend the SLAM option. But this late in the season the FC supplies will be plenty to learn.
 

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