Advice - to open or not to open?

[meestahmarc]

Hi - seems like I won't be getting much use of my pool in June or July and will have limited ability to check on it daily.

So I'm wondering what I should do. Essentially, I'd like to minimize my startup time/effort come August when its probably very hot out.

Should I pull off the cover in June, get it all up and running and clean it up... then basically leave it off and let it go green. Then just shock and clean it (again) when I am around in August - but I figure I'd be well ahead of where it is now... I also don't want to spend the extra money on running the pump, booster pump, and the chlorine pump if not necessary.

Or should I just leave it fully closed and deal with it when I am back around. Probably take a full week.

I do have one of those metered liquid chlorine pumps that I could run, and could run my filter pump on a timer, but I have always been skeptical of doing that if I am not going to be there for more than a week.

Finally, I am the pool guy. 5th season running, rebuilt everything and got everything working great. I don't really want to call a service to come weekly.

Thanks for any thoughts or advice.

 

[Texas Splash]

I suspect right about now you can expect to open to a green pool, even more soupy if you wait until next month. The SLAM Process will take a good week or so to complete. If you don't have the time now to perform the SLAM Process, you might as well wait until you get back. No sense wasting chemicals now. Do it when you have the time to do it properly.