Recent content by troc

Interesting. I made my own skimmer guard without knowing such a thing existed...and it looks very similar. However, this is only a good options for a light debris load as this just means everything goes to the bottom. When the trees shed their leaves, that's a sizable amount and presents a...

That can work most, but not all the time. In early December, when the leaves fall, the skimmer basket needs to be emptied out multiple times a day, else the pump motor will burn out. Not sure there is any pool company out that offers that kind of service and if they did, I probably cannot...

Thanks for your SWG perspective. Definitely something I am thinking about, but I'll go the Stenner/LC route and see how that goes for me since I've already made some investment in it. Maybe next year my perspective will be different.

That's good info to know. I do plan to plan to insulate and shade the tank from the sun, but burying is not likely an option I would go with. I do have it wired with a relay so that the pool pump/motor controlling that and another relay controlled by a float switch in case the tank gets empty...

I appreciate all the replies an perspectives. I am starting to believe that "there is no great solution" is the reality of the situation....at least with the amount of money I am willing to spend on it.

I had not seen either of those. Thanks for sending. I will check them out. I've had a couple covers in the past that were tarp-like with water bags. Was a terrible solution for me, so I've never covered it since as that has been easier. Water bags move and break, it becomes a (heavy) swamp...

I am in the market for a pool cover and had what I thought was a healthy budget for this. The quote I got for a Loop-Loc cover was 2X+ what I was even imagining for the high end and that has me questioning the entire pool cover industry. When I look through past, but semi-recent threads here...

I am in the process of setting up a Stenner pump and tank to automate liquid chlorine injection. I want to do all I can to protect it from the elements, where those elements are dictated by my central Texas location. This means very intense summers (heat, sun, UV), mild winters, but still...

Central Texas summers are very predictable. It's 100 degrees and sunny from late June through early September, so the hope is that I can figure out what the chlorine demand is for that time of year (and the others when needed) to get reasonable close on average. I've been assuming that if I...

That is likely closer to the only answer, but with this general idea that if I can reliably automating injecting a little chlorine over that time, what I would have too deal with on return would not be that terrible.

I certainly appreciate that perspective. I am not that trusting either, hence my goal to find a way that someone like me could trust it for 3 months given all the things I could imagine going wrong. "If you think things can't get worse it's probably only because you lack sufficient imagination."

That is sort of the hope ... *if* I can get things dialed in well enough. Interesting that you say "The automated systems don’t seem to be all that reliable." I had this suspicion being familiar with the complexities of trying to automate anything, but no actual facts about whether they are or...

Monitoring and adjusting chemistry while on vacation would not achieve the goal of 3 months unattended. Having that automated seems to start at $3.5K plus a host of other complications and expenses.

I appreciate that information. The idea that there is salt in a non-saltwater pool is something I've only recently come across and definitely has started to make me wonder and reconsider.

Thank you for that perspective and your experiences. I'll continue to mull over my options. Note that I've really liked the TFP approach so far. Seems more sensible. I suspect it is because it is unlike most other sights that have some other agenda (like selling chemicals). The objectivity...