Out of town for 10 days

[Rick Altman]

I would appreciate advice about how to best prepare for and manage a 10-day absence from my 20,000-gallon in-ground pool. I enjoy a reasonably balanced pool with a quart of 6% chlorine mix every other day and pH reduction about once a week. I could get someone in to continue this, if necessary, but given that we are off season and our Northern California weather tops out in the low 70s, I wonder if I might be able to give the pool a good shock before I go and get by with perhaps just one chlorine treatment five days in.

All comments and advice welcome.

 

[kimkats]

How long until you leave? I say push the FC up to SLAM level for your CYA and see how long it lasts and go from there. This will show you when/if you need someone to come in and add some chlorine.

Kim

 

[setsailsoon]

Rick,

I used to have to do this a couple times per year before I switched to salt. Was able to use Kim's approach except I used trichlor tablets in addition to high initial FC level. If your CYA level permits use of some tablets without going too high this works well since they are also acidic and help avoid high pH. I went 2 weeks one time with this approach but I always ran with CYA low in the TFP range so I could do this for frequent business travel. I used an in-line tablet feeder for the trichlor and had it dialed back so the tablets lasted 2 weeks.

I hope this helps.

Chris

 

[HermanTX]

I have gone a week by adding an extra quart of LC before I depart then have added 4 pucks in a floater. Came home and all was good and still had pucks in the floater. I had minimal increase in CYA and was offset later when I drained some before a big storm hit us in Texas. For 2 weeks, you may want to have a friend come by after 1 week to verify pucks in floater and maybe leave a quart of LC to pour in as well. You could do the calculations on Pool Math to get more precise based on your pool size, current CYA and FC target.

 

[Oly]

Find a neighbor with a responsible son or daughter and strike a deal to pay them after they drop by every three days to add the contents of your prepared chlorine bottles during a time window when your pump is running. Ask them to check your skimmer basket(s) and show them where you keep your leaf net if they find any thing that should be removed from the pool. This works for me.