Vacation setting

[Nova13]

Really long vacation.

Going away for three months how many hours a day should I set the pump to run, it will have a solar cover.

Anything else to consider?

 

[pwrstrk]

How are you going to keep chlorine in it ? I would think 4hrs a day would be ok. How long do you run it now?


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[JasonLion]

For a three month vacation I would either get someone else to watch the pool or winterize the pool (completely shut it down). There are significant risks of damaging the equipment if the pool is left too long without attention. For example if the pump loses prime and isn't turned off or re-primed it will destroy it's self after a while.

 

[pwrstrk]

For a three month vacation I would either get someone else to watch the pool or winterize the pool (completely shut it down). There are significant risks of damaging the equipment if the pool is left too long without attention. For example if the pump loses prime and isn't turned off or re-primed it will destroy it's self after a while.

Yea that sounds even better.


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[Nova13]

But assuming the pump is running will all be ok?

The person watching the house will tell me if the pump is running but he will not maintain anything.

I have an auto fill and overflow pipe etc.

 

[stevenm]

The issue here is keeping the chemicals up-to-date. If your house sitter isn't comfortable adding chems, you should winterize unless you want to come back to a swamp.

A rather expensive and labor-intensive route would be to install a Liquidator and have the house sitter fill it up when it gets depleted (see the chemical automation forum). One of the other methods someone else on here uses is filling empty bleach bottles with your average daily dose of chlorine and having the house sitter dump one of the bottles in every day. The issue with this is filling 90 bottles for the duration of your vacation and the sitter remembering. Plus, your chems could still get out of whack without weekly testing.

Bottom line: you're probably better off winterizing. Summer will be over by the time you come back anyway (unless you live somewhere where you keep your pool open year-round).