Not sure its worth to open early in the future

[rmclain73]

I get the drill of closing late, and opening early. I have done that the past few years and have opened to a relatively clean pool in late April. Usually only takes a couple of days to have everything balanced and in order. However, I must say from about the second week of May to Memorial Day weekend it is a constant battle to keep all of my neighbors oak, maple, and black cherry tree droppings from making a complete mess of everything. I think it would be easier to open later and just deal with whatever is under the cover and doing a slam than the daily aggravation of trying to stay ahead of the mess. If I leave my solar cover off it does help with keeping things easier. Pool circulation does a good job of moving things to the skimmer. However I then lose all my heat put in from the heat pump as temps can still get very low here at night. Realistically up in New England May is not a great swim month anyways. This year it was nothing but cold and rain. I spent all month battling the mess and did not get to use the pool until Memorial Day. Maybe I should switch to a sold winter cover instead of the mesh? If I do decide to open later it may not be as bad. I would still close late.

What to other people do to keep things easier who have a similar situation?

 

[DorsalSpine]

I used to use a a solid cover so I could open later. I usually like to wait so that the farmers around me are done working the ground and spraying. The water is clear as long as you do a good job closing. Others put a puck in a floater when the weather starts to warm up to help keep some chlorine in the water until they open. I've never tried that but I'll consider it for next year. Now that I have an auto cover I can open, check the water and close it right back up. Beats dragging the winter cover off the pool.

 

[TwentyYears]

I have a situation similar to yours - my environment informs my pool schedule.

My neighbor has a large silver maple that drops its seeds in early May each year. I can either wait until it's dropped the seeds and just blow them off the cover or spend hours scooping them out of the water and clearing the skimmer baskets. I choose to just wait until the tree is done. That gives me time to get the pool up to speed for the Memorial Day weekend each year. This year I opened it May 11th and it was ready to swim by Memorial Day weekend.

On the other side, I have several large trees in my yard and there's the silver maple I just mentioned. Mid-October the leaves are getting ready to drop so I just target Columbus Day as the weekend to close and cover the pool. By that time the water is too cold to swim (except for the dogs, they'll swim until it's covered). Same idea as opening in May - if I don't get it covered by the end of Oct leaves start to drop and I'm spending time scooping leaves out of a pool I'm not using anyway.

 

[Scout101]

I also have a ton of oak trees that drop junk, and am usually open by the first week of May. I then fight the water for a bit, and when it's almost ready, the oaks let go and I fight the junk in the pool and skimmers for a week. Not sure if it messes up my slam or just annoys me, though.

This year, was so busy that I didn't open until memorial day weekend. Trees had dropped a week before that. Water was slightly cloudier than it would be in early May, but i'm like 5 days into it and it's basically almost done anyway. Still killing things, so not finished yet, but cleared pretty much immediately. thinking the later open saved me more headache than it cost me. That and I opened myself this year, so could play it by ear and not by scheduling an opening with the pool company in early April to come out in early May...

 

[eripaulie]

I live in Michigan so I am in the same situation. I have a mesh cover. I use to open it in April (it still opened green, and no one swam in it, I was just using a lot of electricity!) but now I wait until the first week of June. About 2 weeks before opening I use a submersible pump with a garden hose to circulate the water under the cover and add liquid chlorine. It is much less green this way. Today was opening day for me and I had to blow off a cover full of those windmill things from the trees.

 

[Cfyfe3199]

This was my first year with a pool, I had to open in early April since we were having a deck built around it and needed accurate measurements. Definitely going to try opening June next year. Wayyy too much stuff clogging up the skimmer basket very quickly.

 

[Mr Bruce]

I get the pump running in March and wait until after the terrible pollen season is over to take the cover off.