Preparing to close pool surrounded by trees

[lilac1]

Our pool is surrounded by trees that are dropping leaves into the pool like crazy right now. I need some advice on what I need to do to keep our pool clean and balanced until I close my pool next week so I don’t end up with an algae bloom soon after closing. I plan on closing with polyquat 60 since water temperature is 67 degrees and I have a mesh cover. I don’t own a robot and don’t have time to manually vacuum the pool every day. I will try to remove leaves with a net twice a day though. I’d like to go ahead and put the cover on but I can’t do that without some help since it is so difficult to get on. I got the pool up to shock level today and plan on keeping the water at half shock level until the day before closing once it dips down that far so I can add the polyquat. When I went to the pool store to pick up the polyquat, the manager recommended that I add some phosphate remover since I have so many trees around the pool. He also suggested that I add some non-chlorine shock to the pool after adding the polyquat to kill off any organics that might have grown in the water after shocking it. He said the non chlorine shock wouldn’t interfere with the polyquat like chlorine would. I didn’t purchase either of these things but was curious to know if they would be beneficial in our situation. I’ve noticed that some pool stores put phosphate removers and bags of non-chlorine shock in their pool closing kits but wasn’t sure why. I normally just get the pool up to shock level a week before and add the polyquat at half shock level but I don’t normally have so many leaves falling into the pool like this.

 

[ajw22]

Keep your FC a few PPM over recommended level for your CYA and net the leaves out as often as you can. That is all you need to do.

Ignore the pool store pushing their phosphate remover and shock. They need to move as much money as they can from your wallet to theirs before the season ends.

Your plan with the PQ60 at closing is good.