We started working on heating the pool in late Feb by turning on the solar panels. Then a few weeks ago I put the solar cover on to keep in the heat. About two weeks ago I turned on the heat pump. Last Friday, March 16th, a friend and I spent the day in the pool, water was 83 and air temp was low 80s and sunny. Wife and I spent last Saturday in the pool. It was pretty good but a tad chilly. Today? Nothing but pool goodness!!! Water is 86, air temp is 83 and sunny with low wind. A perfect start to the pool season.
Thanks to TFP the pool is clear and perfect, as usual. Thanks to all I've learned here the solar panels, solar cover and heat pump has given us another early start to the swim season. This is our third year with a mid-march start to the swim season. We love our pool and we love TFP!
Gilligan is an unmitigated success! Doheny's Discovery, aka Maytronics S200, pool robot made my job so much easier over the last 18ish months. It was added in fall of 2016. Filters are cleaner. I haven't brushed in a year, except for stairs and benches. And the pool is cleaner than ever! I cannot over recommend adding a robot cleaner.
We are on swim season number 7 for our pool with saltwater and flagstone. Most of our flagstone still looks exactly the same as it did in 2012. I am ready to say that saltwater has no, NO, impact on good quality flagstone. We are not any closer to needing to replace our flagstone than we were 7 years ago. If your flagstone is chipping, flaking or deteriorating in any way it is not because of the salt in your pool. We've maintained our saltwater pool TFP style since day one and the salt and bleach haven't had any negative impacts on our pool in any way.
I have never drained a drop of water from our pool since day one. I don't know how much original 2012 water is still in the pool but I haven't removed any water from this pool since it was filled in 2012. I have done a couple of mini-SLAMs for minor algae over the years. But we have swam very single day we wanted to since we filled the pool in 2012. TFP is an amazing place and an amazing way to maintain your pool.
