Pool maintainance while on vaccation

Causes and cures for cloudy swimming pool water.
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Esky

Pool maintainance while on vaccation

Postby Esky » Wed 10 Dec, 2008 02:17

Hi
I live in Perth, Australia which will be in hot summer soon. We going on a holiday for 5 weeks. My problem is I can not leave my salt water pool (30,000 liters)running 10 hours a day because it will get get cloggedup with leaves that will damage the pump. So thought of switching off the pool and overdosing it with chlorine - maybe 10-20 liters - as well as leaving floating chlorine tablets and hopefully when i come back it is only green not a swomp..

any other ideas?
PS i can not get a pool cover-too late


chem geek
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Postby chem geek » Wed 10 Dec, 2008 02:44

Have someone come by and add chlorine to the pool periodically -- every few days, at least twice a week. It's unlikely to have the chlorine last an entire week if you don't have a cover and the sun is shining on the pool all day long. They can add chlorinating liquid or bleach.

As for Trichlor pucks/tabs in floating feeders, they won't last much longer than a week, maybe two, even if you have them dialed down. Again, you're going to be losing chlorine from sunlight. Also, for every 10 ppm Free Chlorine (FC) added by Trichlor, it also increases Cyanuric Acid (CYA) by 6 ppm.

Another option is to use an alagecide such as PolyQuat 60 that someone can add weekly. However, it's viscous and could really use good circulation to mix it in. Not having the pump running is going to make it hard for either algaecide or even chlorinating liquid to mix well throughout the pool. If you can simply have the pump and SWG running, then someone can just clean out your skimmer and pump baskets once a week or two.

The only algaecide you could add that wouldn't need regular replacement would be either 1) copper-based algaecide or copper metal ions (i.e. Pool Wizard), but then you need to be careful not to get copper staining if the pH rises (which it typically does in an SWG pool when the SWG is running) or 2) use of a phosphate remover (e.g. Natural Chemistry Pool Perfect PhosFree) to lower phosphates below 150 ppb. The pool won't be sanitary, but at least you'll prevent algae. You can always shock it with chlorinating liquid or bleach when you get back.

So, looking at all of the above options, the only one that doesn't require someone to come visit the pool and doesn't have side effects would be the phosphate remover.

Richard
Pooltech32
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Postby Pooltech32 » Sat 27 Dec, 2008 00:59

Buy a mesh cover for your pool, they are cheap and will keep the leaves out of the skimmer and off the maindrain, then leave your salt system on, the cost for a mesh cover in Canada is about $150 and that will be cheaper than restoring a swamp.
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