Solar blanket / cover - OK to leave on for 3 days?

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R

Redbull

0
LifeTime Supporter
Jul 10, 2010
22
GTA, Ontario, Canada
I did a quick search and I couldn't find the answer...

We have a solar blanket that we used last summer. We had algae issues last summer and thought that our blanket was contributing. Now that I've found this forum, I realize that we also had other chemical imbalance issues!

Now that fall is approaching again, we are getting quite cool nights here in Canada (approx 59 degrees F). We have taken the cover out to help retain the heat and put the blanket on last night -- bubble side down. It is light blue in colour, I don't know the weight / thickness of the blanket. We are going away this weekend. Are we asking for trouble if we leave the cover on for 3 days and nights in a row? We will lose a lot of heat if we keep the blanket off.

Here's our current levels:
FC = 4
ph = 7.5
TA = 110
CH = 310
CYA = 40 (with more currently in a sock in the skimmer!!)

Pool water looks GREAT and I don't want to mess anything up!! Thanks so much everyone!
:)
 
I have had mine on for several weeks in a row but usually take it off at least once a week. By leaving it on, it should help maintain CL levels while away.
 
My pool has had mustard algae in the past. Has not been a problem this year as it's been so hot that I've been leaving the blanket off. I'm pretty sure that if I left it on, even with lots of bleach, I'd end up with some algae again in shaded and low circ areas.
 
Ours only comes off when we swim. Depending on the weather it may stay on for a week or more. With the cover on, we'll only lose 2 or 3 degrees F on a cool night (lately 12-15C overnight) and may gain 5 or 6F during a sunny day with 3 - 2'x20' solar panels. Sunday morning 67F, Sunday evening 72, Monday morning 70, Monday evening 76.

Don't ask me why, even though everything else we do is in metric, I still read pool temps in F. -- guess is just sounds warmer.
 
I have been leaving my solar cover on (dark blue w/ bubbles) this summer when the weather has not been good for swimming. At most it has been 2 or 3 days in a row. No problems and my chlorine level hardly drops with the cover on. I was wondering how I was going to be able to go on vacation for a week at a time and maintain chlorine since I do not have an automated process yet to add bleach. Problem solved by just leaving the solar cover on while I'm on vacation.
 
I had problems with my cover contributing algae to the pool since the previous owner never used it and it was rolled up and left outside so it was pretty dirty. To solve the problem I shocked the pool and brushed and cleaned the cover while it was on the pool, the dirt ended up in the water (vacuumed it to waste) but the cover is nice and clean now.

I got the cover sanitized by using a brush to push it under water all along the edges which left a 1/2" layer of water above the cover, the shock and brushing got it all and I leave the cover for days at a time now.
 
Thanks for the replies. We decided to leave the cover on for the three days. I'll update tomorrow on how it worked out. I never thought to clean the cover, so I hope there wasn't residual algae from last year on it... We had it in the garage. Can algae survive the Canadian cold winters?

dfenrick said:
Don't ask me why, even though everything else we do is in metric, I still read pool temps in F. -- guess is just sounds warmer.
Click to expand...

LOL! I've just started reading pool temps in metric now. Even when I quote pool temps in F, it doesn't make sense to me. I don't know warm from cold...
 
I just bought this house and converted the pool from pucks to the BBB method, the CYA level was near or over 250ppm so I had to do a nearly complete drain and refill to resolve. As soon as the CYA hit 100ppm I had a major bloom but I was on holidays when it happened so I could react. I completed the refill and drain while the pool was in 50ppm shock while I cleaned up the mess.

Once everything was back to normal at 50ppm CYA and 5-9ppm FC (no CC overnight either) I had a slippery liner so I didn't get all of the algae obviously, all of us had swimmers ear during this time which was very painfull for all of us. I didn't consider the solar cover being a source of algae but it made perfect sense so I raised the pool back into shock and scrubbed it religiously with a car wash brush including the walls of the pool (those magic erasers worked wonders on my border print dirt), all the pool toys and Krawler went into the pool and I left the water on to the slide to sanitize it also...even the diving board got scrubbed and sanitized with a separate bucket full of strong bleach and brushed.

After a week of shock I let it return to normal FC levels and it has been fine, no more slippery liner and no more swimmers ear either (hydrogen peroxide and alchohol soaked swabs fixed us up). Algae is insidious, it can grow anywhere if the conditions are right...personally I think the entire pool was full of it, the pucks the previous owner used had algaecide in them so it kept it at bay until I did the drain/refill.

I'm just glad its over and I am at the normal maintenance stage of pool ownership, I am even down to running the pump for only 8 hours too. It sure is nice to only have to add 1 Litre of 10% bleach a day and adjust the PH once a week, piece of cake! :whoot:

Algae can definetly survive Canadian winters! :rant:
 

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