How many tablets for how long to maintain steady chlorine level for winter?

wags22 said:

For the first time I've purchased a floater and a bucket of tablets but I have no idea how much/many and for how long to maintain a steady chlorine level for the winter? Is there guide for this?
Also, does it make a difference how much the floater is opened/closed?
My pool is 12,500 gallons.

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Depends on if the pool is covered for the winter or not. If it’s covered, you probably don’t need any. If it’s not covered then figure out what your chlorine demand per day is right now and then calculate how much FC each puck adds to your pool. You can do that using the poolmath app. In my case adding one puck will increase the FC 4.1ppm, but since it won’t dissolve in a single day, I’d have to find out how long it takes one tablet to dissolve by experimentation. If it took one week to dissolve, I could divide 4.1 by 7 to get the amount of FC each puck contributes per day as an average which is .6ppm per day. If your pool consumes more FC per day than that in the winter, then you need to add more pucks.

But the real question is why use pucks at all? Just bring the FC level up to SLAM level with liquid chlorine and then cover the pool and wait out the winter. Or if you don’t close it, just keep managing the FC level as you always do. The pucks will slowly increase your stabilizer levels to a point where it becomes unmanageable and so they should be reserved for short term use like on a 2 week vacation.

wags22 said:

I've done pool covers in the past, they've never worked well. Moving now to running pump for about 4 hours and manually chlorinating since salt cell doesn't work when water is under 58.
Forgot about the pucks having stabilizer though, thanks for the reminder.

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Are you sure it stops at 58? It’s weird that I’ve heard that as well but mine will keep making down to about 50. Could always leave a puck floater in there with just one and see how it does. The cold season is probably shorter in Ca than out here so maybe it’s only a few months?