We finally got some warm weather (yesterday was in the high 80's air temp) and the solar heated the pool from the low 70's up to 80 over the past few days. So I fired up the gas last night and got it to 88 today (my wife uses the pool as a therapy pool mostly for in-place exercises plus some swimming) and we went in swimming for the first time. Yeah!!! It was SOOOO nice to get back into the water. Unfortunately, the weather will be cooling for a bit, but by the end of April we should be in full-swing to the swimming season.
My CYA was low so I bought some Dichlor and will use it as my chlorine source until the CYA gets to 30 ppm or so. The claim that Dichlor dissolves quickly isn't exactly accurate. When in granular form (tiny beads as opposed to powder) even pouring over a return flow still results in some beads settling on the bottom. I had to use a brush to mix them up. Maybe this depends on the brand -- I'm not sure why they just don't crush it into powder (maybe to prevent windy conditions from blowing it away from the pool?).
Richard