Doing a soft opening for the first time

Jump to latest Follow Reply
B

ba67

Well-known member
Oct 17, 2018
101
Southern Kentucky
I planned on doing a soft opening of our mesh-covered pool for the first time this year so I could keep the cover on until the trees surrounding our pool stop dropping debris into our pool. I peeked under the cover and the water is already green and there are leaves and bunch of dead worms in it. I haven't tested the water yet since we haven't unwinterized the equipment but I imagine that the CYA is close to zero since it was 40 at closing and I drained water out 4 times over the winter. I also imagine that the PH is high because it usually a bit high at opening.

If I got the leaves out of the pool, could I do a SLAM with the cover on or would this not likely work or cause damage to our cover when pouring the liquid chlorine in? If a SLAM with our mesh cover on likely won't work, could I prevent the algae from getting worse so there won't be any staining? If I can't do a SLAM with the cover on or prevent the algae from getting any worse, I think I'm going to scrap the idea of a soft close because I don't want any stains in our gelcoat.
 
You'd rather deal with the spring debris than the exponentially growing algae once it warms up IMO.

The cover needs to be open to SLAM to allow the sun to burn off the CCs produced by the process.

Mix for a full day before adding CYA, salt or CH. They had all winter to stratify and are slow to mix.

It's plenty late in the season by you to fire up the equipment with no freeze concerns.

When you do open :

1) mix
2) get CYA to 30
3) get PH to a low 7
4) SLAM Process
4-A) the crud needs to go, because it'll chew through chlorine. The process will lighten the pool so you can see more crud on the bottom. Scoop and vac blindly doing your best to maintain a pattern until then.
 
  • Like
Reactions: ba67 and Mdragger88
Newdude said:
You'd rather deal with the spring debris than the exponentially growing algae once it warms up IMO.

The cover needs to be open to SLAM to allow the sun to burn off the CCs produced by the process.
Click to expand...
I didn't realize that the cover needed to be off to burn off the CCs so that is good to know.

Newdude said:
Mix for a full day before adding CYA, salt or CH. They had all winter to stratify and are slow to mix.
Click to expand...
If I'm supposed to wait a full day before adding CYA, should I bother adding chlorine that first day, except at night since the sun will burn it off really quickly due to low CYA? Chlorine is getting expensive so I don't want to add it during the day if it won't likely help. I'm pretty sure that the CYA will be below 30 or even 0 because I closed with a CYA of 40 and had to drain water out 4 times over the winter.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top Bottom
Back
Jump to latest Follow Reply