vacation prep

[tara15]

Hi

Im going on vacation in a week and im not sure what to do. I have a 15x25 AGP. I wont have anyone to take care of the pool, except mabye my mother once during the week. I remember reading a while back, im not sure where, tying up bleach bottles with holes in them and letting the bleach slowly come out during the course of the week. Can I do this? I have some pucks so i can do that also. I dont have a solar cover so there is no way for me to cover the pool. Mabye some algecide before i go away too?

thanks

Tara

 

[JasonLion]

The best solution is to get someone to come over and add a little chlorine once a day. If that is impossible, second choice is a chlorine tablet floater and a solar cover.

Without a person to help out or a cover it is tricky to go more than about four days reliably. The best you can do is to bring the pool to shock level and put in a chlorine tablet floater and hope for the best.

 

[Melt In The Sun]

Tara, as you said, some polyquat algaecide would help too.

 

[Txmat]

Tara, I was faced with the same issue about a month ago. I was going to be gone 10 days. What I did was bring the pool to mustard shock level and fill a wide open floater with pucks. When I got back the pool was sparkling, but my CYA had gone to 100 or more. I had to drain and refill a lot of water. If I were doing it again and my mother was available once I would bring the pool to mustard shock level per the pool calculator just before I left. Put a puck in the floater and ask my mother to come over after about 4 days and throw the floater into the pool. Then when I got home I would test and shock if necessary. I would rather fight the beginning of an algae bloom after I got back then fight the cya.

 

[tara15]

I know, im stuck and it sucks. Ive been fighting with this pool all summer as it is with the excessive heat here in NY. Now that it looks good I dont want to come home to a swamp. I've been using a puck floater already. I vacuum to wast a lot, lots of debris get in the pool, so that helps keep the cya down by adding fresh water. I'll just fill up the puck feeder all the way, put a ton load of bleach in and then get my mom to stop by day 3 or 4. Has anyone used that HTH algecide from Walmart?

Tara

 

[Txmat]

How does the water look now? If it is clear, I would not use any algecide. What is your cya level?

 

[tara15]

right now it looks good. like i said ive been battling with algea all summer, so every couple of days, i get the occassional green spot, i bring the pool up to shock level and then its gone. I have wedding cake steps and cannot get behind them so that is definitly a trouble spot. My test kit doesnt have cya so last time i brought water to the store they said it was 4o, that was a few weeks ago. Like i said its soo hot here and supposed to be near 100 today, it really consumes a lot of chlorine.

 

[anonapersona]

I think that it is the debris in the pool that will become the issue.

 

[mynewpool]

When I was gone for 7 days, I brought my pool up to shock level and left the pump running. I came back to excellent numbers. I did not want to use pucks as I did not need my cya level to go up any. I also did the same on a 4 day trip and came back to excellent numbers.

 

[Txmat]

It is too bad your test kit does not check CYA because if you have read much on this site you know how unreliable pool store tests are. If you can find a CYA test kit and then post your numbers I am sure you will get suggestions on how to deal with the high chlorine use. Here in hot Texas a CYA of 50 works pretty good. You want your CYA high enough that your chlorine doesn't burn off too quickly and low enough that it does not take a huge amount of chlorine to kill the algae. Since you have been using the pucks your CYA may in fact be too high, without good test numbers you cannot tell what is really going on. Your suggestion to bring the pool to shock level and then fill the floater with pucks to take care of the pool while you are gone will work provided you know what shock level is and that depends on knowing what your CYA level is. You also will need to check your CYA when you return and be prepared to drain and refill water to get it back to an appropriate level. You really need a better test kit. Read the section on test kits in the Pool School so you will know what to look for. You may not be able to find a good kit locally, so you may have to order online. Also, if I were you while I was on vacation I would run the pump 24/7.