Vacation and pools - you guys are awesome!

[Phyllig2000]

After finding y'all and making one post, y'all got my pool is perfect condition. So, thank you! The water has been amazing every since and I'm loving being a little bit of a pool geek. My husband now calls me The Waterboy and quotes "now that's some quality H2O."
However, we are leaving for vacation today.
My CYA is 60ish
My pH is 7.5
TA is 100
TC is 0
So I bumped the FC up to 13 since we will be gone for 6 days. The pool gets full sun 8 hours a day.
We may have some family coming over to swim a few times during the week, but maybe not. If they do come over the bather load would only be 2-4 people.
I don't want to ask them to test and add anything.
Am I good? Can I turn my pump of for the week?
Thanks in advance!

Phyllis

 

[Richard320]

If you don't add more chlorine and you stop filtering, you'll come home to a cloudy or green mess.

It's not unreasonable to ask your visitors to add some water if needed and dump in some pre-measured quantity of chlorine in exchange for swimming privileges.

Chlorine breaks down sort of like radioactive decay -- by half-life. So doubling the FC from your normal 8 to 16 will not buy you four days with 2 ppm loss per day, but only one with 8 ppm loss.

 

[JimMarshall]

6 days and any kind of bather load and there is no way you'll keep FC anywhere close to high enough. No pump for a week is also a recipe for disaster. This might be one of the few times that TFP suggests a floater and pucks.

 

[Phyllig2000]

So, if I leave the pump on and don't add more chlorine, would I be ok? How can I get to a point of turning the pump off? Is there any way? Will bringing the FC up to shock level and no pump be ok? Can you draw me a plan with the big, fat crayons for this toddler pool person?

 

[Richard320]

So, if I leave the pump on and don't add more chlorine, would I be ok? How can I get to a point of turning the pump off? Is there any way? Will bringing the FC up to shock level and no pump be ok? Can you draw me a plan with the big, fat crayons for this toddler pool person?

Is your pump not on a timer?

The short answer is NO, you cannot turn the pump off and raise FC to shock level and expect the pool to look okay when you get home. A pool is like a pet - you have to feed it every day, even the days you don't want to play with it! If you can't take the dog with you, you arrange for someone to feed it and check the water bowl, don't you?

Leave the pump on a timer or leave it on the whole time. If you've been testing regularly, you should have some idea of how much bleach you need to add every day. Ask the visitors to dump in X amount every day. Or 2X if they only show up every 3 or 4 days.

 

[niteshift38]

I totally agree with Richard! Leave the pump on if not on a timer (I made that mistake on a weekend camping trip several years ago). Pre-measure daily doses of chlorine to add and then label them each day of the week you'll be gone (you can put them in empty bleach/chlorine you can save up). Ask any swimmers to keep pouring in the doses to keep it current (i.e. If they stop by on Tues. and see both Mon and Tues bottles, add both). Just trying to put ideas out there to help you return to your TFP

 

[Phyllig2000]

Thanks y'all! Will do. I was just trying to save on the power bill. I had sod laid and the sprinkler system is on a timer and eating up the water bill daily. I do have a timer on my pump and will set it to run in the night. Going to dose out the pool food individually now. Thanks so much!

 

[chrismichaelson]

As Jim Marshall said, this may be the one time to use pucks in a floater. We were gone for six days in June and we have no one within 30 miles that we could ask to add bleach. I pushed my FC to 15 (about double my norm) and put four pucks in a floater and ran the pump for about eight hours per day. When I came home, the pucks were only half used and my chlorine level was good and the pool looked great. I had been careful to keep my CYA level at the low end of the acceptable range, so that wasn't a concern.