My pool filter died & I'm leaving town for 3 wks. How to treat while I' m gone? Cover on or off? Help!

Question

My pool is a free form pool, about 40x14 deepest part 8 ft. I have a cover and live in Southern CA where it can get up to 100 this time of year.

Answer 1

Three weeks is a long time to not be able to treat your pool.  Do you have a friend who can come over and pour some chlorine in it for you?  I guess, if you only have those two choices, I'd cover it.  But, you might expect some yellow algae in it when you get home.  Yikes!

Answer 2

maybe if it was hot enough the algae wouldn't grow? that's how it is with other plants. like if u put plastic on the soil, it traps the heat and "solarizes" the soil/kills weed seeds/disease.

but you CAN put slow release chlorine (bleach). here are a few ways:

one, they have dried pellets. BIG dried pellets of it. so u could ask how long they last; maybe some last longer than others.

two, put it in with a slow-drip system. like what would happen if u put a pinhole in a plastic jug? maybe the chlorine would leak out a little at a time. and so u would just need strategically placed bottles. they might even leak just fine if u put them underwater. a good way to check the rate of flow would be to do a test with a jug that had colored water in it.

three, slow drip with a bucket with a tube coming out the bottom. the tube only lets out a little depending on how skinny of a tube it is. if the bucket is sealed/tube is only outlet, then vacum makes it flow slower.

four; you could use a fish pump on a timer. the pump sucks from one bucket and spurts into pool. the pump only turns on once a day, for how long you say. fish pump is less than $10 usually and a timer is $5 USD (hardware department).

if using buckets for any of this, or even jugs with pinholes, the top cannot be open; i mean the jug must be capped or the bucket must have a lid on it. Or else the chlorine will evaporate. This is common knowledge in indoor growing where we leave the jug out overnight on purpose to evaporate the chlorine off city water and it is why you have to keep on adding chlorine to pools, because it easily evaporates.

so if you used suggestion four, you would want to run the tube through a hole u punch in the bucket lid.

have fun on vacation!! if i lived in So Cali, i would come and swim in your pool while u were gone and add the chlorine for you. like poster number one said, maybe you have someone you can trust not to drown (and sue you...).

Answer 3

remove the cover,add 12 gallons of liquid chlorine and put a floater (or two) full of 3" chlorine tablets...that should hold it...you may have a little algae when you get back but the water will still be blue!