For those with MESH covers...EUREKA!! Open to a clean pool!

[Tyrone Shuz]

...and I don't mean opening in March.

A guy who works at my pool service place (I use 'em to close, and fix stuff when I cannot, I open myself) told me about this, and it really works.

I have stairs on one end, but it works fine if you don't.

Prior to putting the cover on for the winter, I put a bucket on the 3rd stair down, which would be below the lowered water level. Inside that bucket goes a sump pump, and attached to it is an appropriate length of garden hose to get to the deep end of the pool.

Since I close either the end of Sept or beginning of Oct (depending on when the dang neighbors' huge oak tree really sheds) it's still warm for a few weeks thereafter, and as we all know, the "winterizing" chlorine is gone in a few days to a week, max.

Three or four days past closing, I undo two of the loop-locs, and drop a puck in the bucket, and I repeat this once/week till the temperature is pretty much below 60F, about 4-5weeks. Then, every time we get an unseasonable warm snap where the temp goes above 60, I drop a puck in (I do NOT use pucks when the pool is open). I'll run the sump pump all day, perhaps unplug at night, then plug back in in the morning, or if it's really warm, just leave it running.

I think I used 5 after closing, and another 1 or 2 due to ridiculously high temps over the winter, and then about 4 more in the month prior to opening.

When I took the cover off on Wednesday, there was NO GREEN! It was murky from pollen, and there was schmutz on the bottom because we had some wind, and some leaves and things get under the cover and into the pool on occasion.

ONE BACKWASH was all it took! ONE!! It only takes a few minutes to undo a couple of the springs and drop a puck in, and that's so much more pleasant than unfurling the backwash hose, and dealing out the DE, etc.

If you don't have stairs, you'll need to put a rope on the bucket handle, or have real good aim with the pucks. Or, I suppose you could tie the puck to a rope and lower it in, but you certainly don't want to miss the target, especially if you have a vinyl pool.

Anyway, I'm proud of myself!

 

[PVille]

I like your plan. Just to make sure I understand is the sump pump is acting as a recirculating pump since the hose is in the deep end? How do you drain the pool after heavy rain/snow? Do you have a second sump pump?

 

[Tyrone Shuz]

Yes, the stairs are in the shallow end, and I run the hose to the deep end. My pool is vinyl lined, so the men lower the H20 about 4" or more below the skimmer. I haven't yet had a winter overflow problem, just once in the summer, and obviously I can backwash that out. We had a ton of rain over the winter, and the pool was perfectly full when I opened, didn't have to add or drain. In the past, I've usually had to add an inch or so. Remember, you're not adding water in the winter like you do in the summer, so evaporation becomes your friend.

If it happens in the winter, I suppose I could simply remove the hose from the deep end and water the yard, but a better solution would be to attach a longer hose out to the street from the end of the hose that's in there. I run the hose out of the pump and up and along the side of the pool and then tuck the far end back under the cover, so it would be real easy to remove and either water the lawn (bad if there's enough water to cause it to rise that much) or unplug it, attach another hose to the end, run it to the street, and plug it back in till the water is low enough.

 

[diniba69]

Sounds like a great idea. I did a real lazy man version of this with my gunite pool last summer. I just put about 3-4 pucks in a floater under the mesh cover, and I opened up to a non green pool. I wish I had done that this year (or your idea) becasue this year it's a swamp, and since i am waiting for new equipment to be installed, I have still not tackled it.

 

[Tyrone Shuz]

If you have a cement or gunnite pool, your plan should be just fine, but on a vinyl pool like mine, if the floater rests against the liner, it'll bleach it out every place it lands. I'd still recommend a sump to circulate the water a bit, but natural wind and/or rainfall would certainly facilitate that. Also, you never know where your floater might float to, so in order to add more pucks, I suppose it needs to be attached by twine or something.