First vacation without pool help

[PointeTaken]

We are headed out of town on vacation for 5 days tomorrow, and for the first time ever, I haven’t been able to get someone to watch our pool while we’re gone. Several of our neighbors moved out in the past 6 months and we haven’t gotten to know the new ones to the point that we could trust them. In fact I’m pretty sure one of them would throw a pool party. Our only reliable neighbor remaining is currently unreliable (self-proclaimed) due to her recent divorce. Her then-husband would often look after our pool while we’d be on vacation. And, it turns out, the three friends we have within reasonable driving distance are all going on vacation too. Here are my two concerns about running the pump while we are gone:

1. The oak trees are still laden with catkins. About every other morning, I open my skimmer cover to find the skimmer completely plugged with catkins...literally all the way up to the cover. That means the skimmer would likely be completely stopped up halfway through our absence. The “main” drain, located about 20” below the skimmer opening, does not take long to get plugged up with debris after the skimmer goes.
2. On Christmas Eve last year, while we were all having dinner with family 30 miles away, our pump was busy emptying the pool into our neighbors’ yard. This is because the spider gasket in the multiport failed. I came home that night to a pump in freeze protection mode gasping for water. Fortunately, the pump itself didn’t get damaged. But now I’m paranoid. If that were to happen while we are gone for many days, the results would be far more catastrophic.

Possible solutions:

1. Bring pool up to SLAM level, and then set the pump to run for 2-3 hours a day at a low speed, with SWCG set to 100%. Raise the water to just below skimmer top to reduce skimming action.
2. Bring pool up to SLAM. Put a floater in the pool with tricholr, and run the pump for an hour or two a day on a moderate speed to get water moving. I’m worried this won’t disperse the trichlor enough.
3. Bring pool to just above SLAM level, shut everything down, and hope for the best. At a CYA of 70, my daily chlorine demand is only around 1 ppm. I’m not sure how much that would increase with little to no circulation and a build-up of organic material. Highs are supposed to be 75-80 while we are gone, with no rain. Wondering if running the pump on a low speed for an hour a day would move things around enough.

Would love to hear anyone else’s thoughts. There are multiple threads on this topic on this forum, but most are 8-10 years old.

 

[cowboycasey]

I think #1 would work perfect, low speed will not pull as much into the skimmer and it will make chlorine and move it around.. good to go

 

[Oly]

I too would go with option #1. You could float a couple of tabs and anchor the device in front of a return. No responsible youngish kids in the neighbor willing to make $20 to clean or swap out the skimmer basket with a backup?

 

[PointeTaken]

I too would go with option #1. You could float a couple of tabs and anchor the device in front of a return. No responsible youngish kids in the neighbor willing to make $20 to clean or swap out the skimmer basket with a backup?

Unfortunately most of the kids in our small neighborhood are elementary age, with a couple in middle school. My aforementioned neighbor has since said that her daughter (who I know to be very responsible) is back from college starting Thursday. She’s going to see if she plans on being around much through the weekend. Figured if that’s the case I could tape some instructions inside the control panel door. It’s not exactly rocket science and she’s not daft. Hoping she’s able to come through, otherwise I’m going to go with #1.