Questions about opening a pool and using a mesh cover

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Davek1999

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Jul 10, 2015
6
Zeeland/Michigan
I have been reading through the whole process and all I can say is thank you for documenting everything and to all the people that have posted all the help. I too am a first-timer with no clue and the advice on all the forums, expecially this one, has helped a lot.

I do have a question for all those that have knowledge on this situation. Is it normal to have your pool look like this at the beginning of the season? I live in Michigan, have a similar size pool with the same mesh type cover and have struggled for 3 years now when it comes to opening our pool. It gets frustrating to fight the same things year after year. Am I doing something wrong, or is this the tradeoff that I am paying for the security of the mesh cover? It almost seems that it acts like a coffee filter.

Mod note: I moved this post to it's own thread from here:

Yet another first-timer with no clue what he's doing... - Page 7
 
Davek1999 said:
I have been reading through the whole process and all I can say is thank you for documenting everything and to all the people that have posted all the help. I too am a first-timer with no clue and the advice on all the forums, expecially this one, has helped a lot.

I do have a question for all those that have knowledge on this situation. Is it normal to have your pool look like this at the beginning of the season? I live in Michigan, have a similar size pool with the same mesh type cover and have struggled for 3 years now when it comes to opening our pool. It gets frustrating to fight the same things year after year. Am I doing something wrong, or is this the tradeoff that I am paying for the security of the mesh cover? It almost seems that it acts like a coffee filter.
Click to expand...

Glad you're getting something out of it, that was part of the intent of doing it a little bit diary-style. To document it, talk it through out loud with people that could correct my guesswork, etc. Tried to keep it entertaining enough to read, as well. Few people want to read a chemistry journal!

I obviously can't speak to the normality of it, as I've got exactly one data point, but I don't see it as a big deal. It definitely looked like a nicely-steeped tea when I started, though. Cover does it's job, and still feels like the right choice. I think I had it worse because of the 3 years the pool was closed, so I had a lot of SOLID matter in there as well. Years of grass clippings and leaves sneaking under the cover, hordes of worms that held sacrificial rites in the pool, etc. I'd imagine that with only a single fall to collect things, it should be cleaner.

The other trick, from what I'm gathering, is waiting to winterize the pool until the temp has dropped and held colder. If you're bleaching until algae won't grow, and open it again before it gets too warm, should miss most of the bad part, and just have to deal with the leaves that turned to tea. For sure, I had years of nice hot water with no bleach, so was teaming with algae, which added a week or two on it's own. Watching other threads, it would seem that without huge solid masses of it, it should have skipped ahead a bit faster to start.

Not sure that it will ever be perfect with a mesh cover that allows things in, but seems a reasonable tradeoff vice the solid cover and worries about weight, water/snow, etc. It just goes through ours without damaging anything or needing to pump off.

take all that with a 50lb bag of salt, I'm obviously a rookie here myself, and you've got a couple years of pool ownership on me. I grew up on the ocean, it sorta kept itself balanced without me.
 
Sssooooo.... Not being able to see the bottom of the deep end, as was the case with you, did you find a trick to getting all the junk off the bottom, besides fishing with the net over and over again. I did go out and buy a robot, online not double the price from the pool guy (thanks again troublefreepool), but am a little hesitant on dropping him in right now. I take it from reading through your ordeal, steps would be stabilize and chlorinate, in that order.

We kept bring samples into our local pool supply store and they kept selling us more shock, the SWG couldn't keep up. It wasn't until a friend told me about this site and I purchased the test kit last year that I found an essentially 0 CYA level was my problem. Still fighting that and learning more everyday.
 
Scooping with a leaf rake, pumping out with a trash pump, siphoning with a hose or vacuuming to waste are the best ways to remove debris from a pool. A robot or pool cleaner is designed to keep a clean pool clean. They will clog up in a few minutes.

Where is Zeeland? New Zealand? Update your location in your profile so it shows up over there <-----, climate is important in pool care and the advice we offer.

Add your pool info to your signature so we know what kind of pool equipment we are helping you with, for example, you may not be able to vac to waste depending on what kind of filter you have. More on adding a sig here, Pool School - Read This Before You Post
 
Good old manual labor in my case. Leaf rake on a stick, basically plowing the bottom of the pool until I didn't come up with anything any more. it was tough in the deep end, not seeing things, but got 90% or so that way. About 3 wheelbarrow loads completely full of slime. Didn't have great luck with vacuuming, so really just raking and then brushing around until it got lighter. Probably put more stuff into my filter that way, but just backwashed my way clear. Once I was reasonably sure I had gotten the bulk of it, I sent in the robot to start a better scrub (with the 'junk' filter on prior to the more fine filter later on). Didn't want to send him into a suicide mission if there was an inch of gunk on the floor still; he's expensive.

Just leaf rake as much as you can get, get the stabilizer and bleach in there, and brush things around. That will start to clear it up some, and you can put the robot in once you feel it's safe for him. I didn't want to risk him when there was too much unknown in the pool.

Next season, when I know it's just the winter's algae/leaf mess, I might feel better about it. But I came up with a few pool toys and a chipmunk or two as well (I think the chipmunk was a more recent drowning and not a permanent resident), so not great to run the robot over solid objects that could damage him.
 
Probably would have been best to not put in CYA until you do a SLAM method. That way you do not have to fight getting above a CYA level. Next would be to get your pH straight and keep SLAMming the pool until the end results are met.
This is my two cents, I'll let one of the experts chime in as well.
 
I live at the same latitude as you across the state. I opened my pool to a crystal clear, almost ready to swim condition (except for this little gem). Can't comment on the mesh cover because mine is solid. But from what I have read on this forum, keep the pool operating with chlorine until the water is below 50 degrees and get it operating with chlorine before the water warms to 50 degrees. With cold water, algae grows much slower and your chlorine will last much longer too. That mesh cover should provide some sun protection, but not as much as a solid cover.
 
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