Netting vs. Vaccing

[TreeFiter]

Occasionally when we open pools, we will come across a real mess. Usually a solid cover that didn't survive the winter, and dumped a whole lot of leaves and nasty water into the pool. So my job is to clean up this mess as quickly and efficiently as possible. So I have heard some people say that I should never try to net out the piles of leaves from the bottom, because it will stir up all the muck, and the pool will take forever to clear up.

I can see how this could make sense, but I can also see how it might not. If you stir up the muck, it will take a while to settle back out, so netting would be a bad thing. But if you stir up the muck, it can now be filtered out. So does anybody know which is right, or if it matters?

For those of you that might ask, why not just vacuum it anyway; sometimes the amount of debris is overwhelming, and can be removed much quicker by netting. You could compare it to cleaning up a landslide with a shop-vac when you have an excavator standing by. Sometimes the pile of debris will clog the vac head repeatedly causing for a long slow process, during which you are wasting water out of the pool.

 

[JasonLion]

It all comes down to deciding what your priorities are. Both approaches will work. If leaving for the day with clear water is very important then you probably don't want to use a leaf net. On the other hand, if getting the pool back up and running with minimum labor is important then using a leaf net is a more efficient use of your time.

 

[TreeFiter]

I believe the concern came from my boss. He claims that in the past netting resulted in pools that stayed cloudy for months. I think he has trouble figuring out what problems were water quality problems, and which were lazy employee problems.

In many of these cases, the water is already cloudy, and we are blind vaccing. So in my mind, the water already needs to filter. But it sounds like if we are dealing with a total disaster, there isn't any real reason not to net out the bulk for efficiency, and vac out the rest. Usually, the more of the debris you get out, the more likely it is to clear up, so netting could be the smart choice.