Out of Town Best Practices?

[Fenchurch23]

First, a huge thank you to everyone on the board--the info here had me SLAMing my pool to clear, and all the advice has worked great so far!

I'm leaving town for a week, and I don't have anyone who can check the pool/add chemicals while I'm gone.

So far, I've been using liquid chlorine (about 64oz per day) to keep my chlorine in range (about ~5ppm for my current CYA), and I've been keeping my CYA low (it's currently between 20-30) knowing I will need to use pucks for vacation and the pucks will bump it up.

I purchased a floater and a bucket of pucks, and will be using them for the first time. My questions:
-Is it feasible that a single floater of pucks will last for a full week?
-Should I be using more than one floater? Pool is about 27K gallons.
-What setting should I use? I got the mainstays floater from walmart in case anyone is familiar with it (Robot or human?)
-Are dichlor or trichlor pucks preferred for vacation?
-I saw some remarks about puck floaters damaging pools--I have a vinyl liner. Are there any special precautions I need to take to make sure that doesn't happen?
-Anything else I should consider/test before going out of town? Unfortunately I don't have a solar cover for the pool or a SWG, and I don't *think* I can add pucks directly to the pump basket or anything.
Thanks again--you guys are awesome!

 

[Donldson]

Not having a solar cover with such a low CYA level is going to make it more difficult. Realistically you'll only be adding an additional 7-15 ppm of CYA so if you are able to bring that up to 40 before you leave that will be helpful in holding your FC. However, even if you aren't fully successful in maintaining FC the effort will at least lessen any possible cleanup needed.

My method is to raise the FC up to SLAM level and then use 2 ppm per day to calculate how much trichlor to use. If your CYA is still that low, I'd aim for 4 ppm instead, but that's up to you. So for a week I would say 14 ppm (or 28 ppm) FC and use PoolMath to calculate how much trichlor will add that. Each 3 inch tablet is 8 ounces (or should be, watch out for some cheap ones that are only 7 ounces) and I'll add that to the water in however many floats it needs.

You'll also want to make sure your pH isn't too low and possibly add 10 ppm of baking soda to counter the low pH of the trichlor over the week. With luck you'll arrive home with at least some FC in the water, pH in a reasonable place, and little to no cleanup to deal with. Have a good trip!