After all the frustrations of dealing with a tarp cover for the pool last winter, we decided it was time to try something different.  This summer, we researched and ordered a new mesh safety cover for the pool.  We’ve only had it for a few weeks, but so far, it’s a big improvement over what we were dealing with last year.  It also looks a lot cleaner … here are pictures of the old tarp cover and the new mesh cover:

The old tarp cover

The new mesh cover

One of the things we like a lot better about this cover is the fact that it’s a safety cover that’s anchored into the concrete all around the edges of the pool.  We like the piece of mind knowing that the cover would support the weight of anything that might otherwise accidentally fall into the pool.  The cover seems pretty sturdy, but we’ve already noticed a lot of muddy footprints on it, which makes us sort of nervous that the raccoons will attempt to do the same thing to it that they did to the water bags last fall.  So far, so good, though.

Each of the straps that connects the cover to the anchors in the concrete has a spring attached to it, so the cover will have a little give as the snow starts to pile on it this winter.  Right now, we’ve got the cover on pretty loosely, but the recommendation is to put it on so that the springs aren’t more than half-way compressed when there’s no weight on the cover.  This will allow enough give for the cover to stretch and rest on top of the water left in the pool when there’s snow on it.

Anchors for the new cover

It’s also a mesh cover, so the water will be allowed to drain through it into the pool over the course of the winter as the snow melts or when it rains in the spring.  We’re not sure yet if this will be a good thing or not.  We think it will make opening the pool much less work because we won’t have to pump water off the top of the cover (which was the most time consuming part of opening the pool with a tarp cover), but it does mean that we need to periodically keep an eye on the water level in the pool and use a submersible pump to lower it if the level gets too high over the winter.  The guys at the pool store thought we wouldn’t have to worry about it until the middle of March or so, but we’ll probably plan to check it more frequently than that, at least to start with.  We’re also not sure what letting all of that water into the pool will do to the pool water when we open it in the spring.  The pool was pretty much clear this spring when we opened it after having a tarp cover on all winter, but letting all of that water into the pool over the course of the winter seems to almost guarantee that it will be pretty murky come spring.  Everything we’ve read says the trick is to close late and open early so that the water temperature stays at or below 60 degrees during the time that the pool is closed to prevent the algae from growing.  Guess we’ll have to wait and see how that turns out.  For now, though, it’s sure nice to not have to deal with leaking water bags!

The water in our pool started to turn a little cloudy over the weekend.  After running the first set of tests, the only difference we noticed about the water was that the pH level looked a little high.  So, on Tuesday, I added some pH Minus to try to bring it back to a more acceptable range, which appears to have worked (it’s now a much more normal 7.4).  After that adjustment, all elements of the pool chemistry were within the acceptable range, but the water didn’t look any better … in fact it started getting worse.  As of yesterday, the pool had turned a nice shade of green and was so cloudy I couldn’t see the bottom drain.

Even though the chlorine level has remained higher than we normally keep it all week, I still shocked the pool two nights ago to try to kill whatever was growing in the water, but it hasn’t seemed to make a difference.  Because the chemistry of the pool water seems to be fine, we’re now thinking the cause of the problem is the our sand filter becoming “channeled” so that the water passes through it without actually being filtered.  To fix this, I backwashed until the site-glass turned clear and then started the rinse cycle, planning to let it run for a while, but only about a minute in, the small corregated pipe we’re using as a backwash hose came detatched from the filter (and wouldn’t stay attached again with all of the water pressure once it had come loose) so I had to turn it off and just start filtering again.  Even with only a minute or so of rinsing, though, it seems like the filter is starting to work a little better … the drain was at least visible by the time I got home from work tonight.

We bought a bigger diameter corrugated pipe tonight to use for backwashing so we can get that back up and running this weekend.  Hopefully after a full cycle of backwashing and rinsing, we’ll notice an even bigger improvement in the filter performance and our pool water will go back to being crystal clear.

Our pool water started to turn a little cloudy over the weekend.  It wasn’t real obvious from the surface, but it was sure noticeable from under water.  Visibility was really limited.  We started by running the filter longer than normal – left it on for the whole 3 day weekend.  And we also shocked the water up to a chlorine level of around 9 ppm thinking that would clear the pool of whatever algae might be starting to grow.  After two days, though, the chlorine level is still over 5 and the pool water is looking cloudier than it has all weekend.

We ran a full battery of tests on it last night and the only thing that appears to have changed about the water since the last time we tested it (when it was clear) is the pH level.  It’s gone up to 7.8 (from 7.6).  Most pool resources (including our test kit) list 7.8 as being on the high end of being acceptable, so it doesn’t seem like that should be the problem, but nothing else has really changed and one of the symptoms of a high pH level is that the water will start to turn cloudy.

So, I stopped at Wal-Mart tonight on my way home and bought some pH Minus to start trying to reduce the pH of the pool water.  I put in about 18 oz, which is a little less than the recommended 4oz/5,000 gallons of pool water (for our 25,000 gallon pool), but I figure it should be ok since the pH isn’t really that high.  I added it to the water a couple of hours ago and then started sweeping the bottom of the pool.  It had only been a couple of days since we’d ran the pool robot, but the bottom was completely covered in a yellowy-brown dust that made the pool water turn an interesting shade of green by the time I’d swept it all up.  I’m hoping that between stirring the dust up again to give the filter a second shot at picking it up and adding the pH minus to the water tonight, things will start to look a bit clearer tomorrow.  Guess we’ll see how it goes …

Check out the cool new light we got for our pool last week!

It’s a floating, rechargeable light called the “Glow Buoy”.  It’s pretty bright and it does an ok job in our 17′ x 34′ pool, although, we think it would be better if the pool was all one depth.  Considering that we have a 5′ difference in depth between the shallow and deep ends of the pool, though, we think we’d probably need 2 to really light the pool evenly.  Regardless, though, it does a good enough job of lighting the pool and surrounding area that we’ll be able to swim after dark now … and it sure beats installing lights in the pool.

… is just about the coolest thing ever!

We’d been researching pool robots for a while and we finally broke down and bought one a couple of weeks ago. We wound up purchasing the Aquabot Turbo T “Bearbot” and it seems to do a pretty good job. It crawls the bottom and sides of the pool, scrubbing them and vacuuming up any debris and also filters about 5000 gallons of water an hour in addition to what the normal pool filter is doing, so it helps the pool water feel cleaner overall in addition to making sure that the bottom stays clean.

For our 17′ x 34′, approximately 25,000 gallon pool, it takes about 2 hours for the Aquabot to cover the whole pool in a pretty random pattern that can be fairly frustrating to watch, but it seems to eventually cover all of the dirty spots. We don’t really have any problems with the robot getting hung up on anything, although we have a pretty simple oval pool with no ladders or anything, so it’s probably one of the simpler pools for the robot to clean.

Before purchasing the Aquabot, we did some research online for a bunch of different pool cleaners. We were between the Aquabot Turbo T, Aquabot Turbo T2, and the Blue Diamond robots and we wound up purchasing the Turbo T mostly because it was the one that we found in stock at one of the local pool stores. According to the salespeople at a couple of the stores we looked at and also according to what we’d read online, it sounds like it’s normal for all three models of robots to need maintenance relatively frequently, which is covered by warranty for the first few years, depending on the model. So, we decided that we would rather spend a little more purchasing a robot locally from a dealer that also services them rather than having to worry about shipping it back and forth to the manufacturer for service if we purchased it online.

So far, we’re pretty happy with the purchase. It’s saving a lot of time that we would be spending vacuuming the pool otherwise and it does a lot better job than what we were ever able to figure out how to do manually.

Our problematic cloudy pool water from a few days ago is a thing of the past! The flocculant that we added to the pool water a couple of days ago did an amazing job of combining all of the dust and dead algae in the water into larger particles that sunk to the bottom of the pool.

After about 18 hours with the filter turned off, the water was back to being clear and the bottom of the pool was layered in grayish-white dust, which you can kind of make out in the picture above. After vacuuming everything that had settled to the bottom of the pool to waste (to avoid clogging the filter with all of the extra debris), we shocked the pool one more time and added one more dose of clarifier to make the water crystal clear. And now, thank goodness, we’re back to a normal maintenance plan on the pool … hopefully we’ll manage to not have any algae problems this time.

About a week and a half ago, when Chad was traveling for work, I went out to the pool to empty the strainer and check the chemical levels and I noticed that the filter pump wasn’t running because a fuse had blown. Chad and I talked about it and decided to just wait until he got back to fix it. So, the pool sat for about a week without the filter running and with no chemicals being added. When we finally replaced the fuse to get pump started again a few days ago, we took the solar cover off of the pool and found that the water was so cloudy we couldn’t see the bottom of the pool anymore and the free chlorine level was so low it wasn’t measurable on the test strip!

With the free chlorine level being so low, we started by shocking the pool with the normal dosage of shock treatment, which is 2 1-lb bags of Super Sock-It for our 25,000 gallon pool, but when the pool still measured a zero chlorine level the next night and the water showed no signs of being any less cloudy, we started studying up on pool maintenance.

The first thing we figured out is that the pH of the water impacts how effective the chlorine is at sanitizing the water, so when the first shock treatment didn’t even register on the free chlorine scale, we added a full 5 lbs. of pH Plus to increase the pH of our water from 6.4 to somewhere closer to 7.5 … and then we shocked it again with 2 more bags of Super Sock-It and about 70 oz. of granulated chlorine. By the next morning, the chlorine level was starting to register at about 1ppm and the pH was closer to 6.8, but both were still too low, so we added another 5 lbs of pH Plus and another 4 bags of Super Sock-It. These raised the pH to around 7.2 and the chlorine level was registering at about 3 ppm. By that evening, though, the free chlorine had dropped again, so we added another 5 bags of Super Sock-It and about 36 oz. of granulated chlorine to bring the level up to somewhere around 5ppm. By this time, the algae that was making the water so cloudy was turning a grayish-white color, indicating that it was dead, so we added a triple dose of clarifier to the water so that the dead algae would clump together, making it easier for the filter to pick up.

After giving the clarifier a couple of days to do its job, we were able to see the bottom of the pool in the shallow end again and we were starting to be able to make out the drain at the bottom of the deep end, but the water was still looking pretty cloudy, so we added a dose of Super Floc to the water this afternoon. After letting it circulate for about an hour, we shut the pump off to give all of the dead algae and other stuff in the pool a chance to settle to the bottom so that we can vacuum it to waste tomorrow. It’s already started to clear up some and the bottom is starting to be covered with a white-ish dust, so it looks like it’s working!

One of the things that confused us the most about the whole process was why we had to add so much chlorine and why the level would initially spike and then drop back down by the next time we went out to measure it, but after doing some research, it makes complete sense. The amount of chlorine we are measuring in the water is the free chlorine level, which represents the amount of chlorine in the water that is available to kill bacteria, algae, etc. This is different than the level of combined chlorine, which is the amount of chlorine in the pool that’s already done its job by combining with the algae and killing it. So, the fact that our free chlorine level was dropping was actually a good thing because it meant we were making progress toward killing the algae. The other thing we found confusing was that we would go out to the pool and smell the chlorine, but the level of free chlorine would be low. It turns out that the chlorine smell actually comes from the amount of combined chlorine in the pool – not the amount of free chlorine … and to get rid of it, you shock the pool.

We’ve definitely learned a lot about pool maintenance this week. All-in-all, we’ve added around 10 lbs. of pH Plus, 6 lbs of chlorine, 12 lbs of Super Sock It, a gallon of clarifier, and a quart of Super Floc to the pool, but at least the good news is that the situation appears to be under control now.

We ordered a new solar cover for our swimming pool shortly after opening it a couple of weeks ago. It came only a few days later, but we didn’t get a chance to do anything with it until this weekend. The cover we ordered was actually for a pool a little bigger than ours – we ordered an 18′ x 36′ rectangular blue/clear cover for our pool that’s a 17′ by 34′ oval since we couldn’t find one that was perfectly sized to our pool and we’d read multiple places (and the previous owners told us) that it would work out fine to buy one a little larger and just cut it to size.

So, this afternoon, we hauled the new solar cover out to the pool, unfolded it over the pool, and started trying to figure out the easiest approach to cutting it to size. The instructions said that the pool cover would need to lay out for a few days to completely relax so that it could be cut most accurately, so we decided to do just a rough cut today (so it wouldn’t be all wadded up in the pool or laying on the deck) and then we’ll come back and do a more accurate trim after it’s had a chance to relax. We started by measuring the width of the pool and cutting about 13″ off of the width of the cover so it would float without getting all bunched up on the sides. Manufacturing a pool cover must not be an exact science because ours came with edges that weren’t square and it was a little larger than the advertised size, so we figure they must expect everyone to do some trimming, even if the pool cover was ordered to be the same size and shape as the pool. After we got the extra width trimmed off, we ran a pair of scissors along the metal rim on the top of the pool liner to try to get the oval shape of the ends transferred to the cover. It still needs to be cleaned up a little, but it’s a good start. Once the cover has flattened out a little, we’ll go back and do a more accurate cut to get it to the right size for the pool.

We’re hoping that the solar cover will help the water to better retain the heat the water will gain from the sun. Our pool temperature has been averaging somewhere between 58 and 60 degrees since we opened it, so hopefully this will help to raise it a few degrees so we won’t have to run the heater as much when we finally get impatient and decide it’s time to start swimming. The cover is also supposed to help reduce the amount of evaporation and chemical usage. We haven’t really noticed a problem with either of those yet, but I’ll be happy to be able to fill the pool and add chemicals even more infrequently than we’ve had to so far.

We took advantage of the warmer weather last weekend and decided to open our swimming pool for the season. This was our first experience with doing any real swimming pool maintenance since we moved in last fall and we debated about hiring a local pool company to open it for us, but, once we figured out that all they would really do was pull the winter plugs, replace the skimmer baskets, and prime the pump, we started reading about our equipment and decided to try opening it ourselves.

As it turns out, there’s nothing complicated about opening a swimming pool, even if you’ve never done it before. So, I thought I’d post the steps we followed in case anyone else finds themselves in a similar position. We also found this How-To page (and others on the same site) to be a pretty good reference for opening a swimming pool and for pools in general.

Step 1
Remove the winter cover from the pool. If the winter cover is the tarp variety, this includes pumping off any water that’s accumulated on the cover over the winter. It’s best to start on this early since it can take some time. We also found that it’s helpful to start rolling the cover back as soon as the water level starts to go down. This helps to keep the water on top of the cover deep enough for the pump and makes it easier to start filling the pool before the cover is completely off.

Step 2
Remove the winter plugs and replace the skimmer basket and eyeball return jets. This will release the anti-freeze into the pool.

Step 3
Inspect the pool equipment and replace the plugs on the pump head and filter. At first, we didn’t know where the plugs would be, but it is apparently standard to store them in the basket inside the pump head for the winter.

Step 4
Start filling the pool to normal operating water level. Since this will take a while, it’s not a bad idea to start this before the winter cover is completely removed from the pool.

Step 5
When all of the water has been pumped off of the pool cover, remove it, hose it off, and store it for the summer. We’ve been told that this is the most important part of opening a pool because it’s difficult correct the problems caused when the yucky green water and algae on top of the cover get into the pool.

Step 6
Using a pool leaf rake, remove as much debris as possible from the surface of the water and the bottom of the pool.

Step 7
Scrub the sides of the pool with a curved brush and shock the pool water. At this point, don’t be worried too much if the water is cloudy.

Step 8
Prime the pump by filling the pump head with water from the pool and replacing the lid. Your filter may differ, but the owners manual for ours said to first backwash the filter by setting it to “Backwash” and then starting the pump and running it for 2-3 minutes. Then, stop the pump, change the filter setting to “Rinse”, start the pump back up and run it for another minute or two until the water runs clean. Then, stop the pump again, change the filter setting to “Filter”, and start the pump back up. Run the filter for the next 24 hours on the “filter” setting, repeating the backwash and rinse steps every time the PSI increases by 10.

When we first attempted to start our pump, it buzzed, but wouldn’t start up. Since the pump had sat outside all winter, we think something must have corroded causing the impeller to not be able to turn. We disconnected the pump from the pump head and turned the impeller by hand a few times, which freed it up and it’s worked fine since then.

Step 9
Shut the pump off to let everything settle over night. Then vacuum the sides and bottom of the pool and start the pump back up to continue filtering the water.

Step 10
Periodically, check the chemical levels using test strips and add the appropriate chemicals to balance the water. Don’t be alarmed if it takes a few days for the water to clear up. Our pump ran for about 3 days before we could see the drain on the bottom of our pool.

When we moved in last fall, our swimming pool was already closed for the season and covered with a tarp-like cover that was weighted down with water bags all around the edge of the pool. Over the winter, rain, snow, and leaves have accumulated on top of the cover, so come this spring, we had a large green pool of water on the cover that needed to be pumped off before we can remove it to open the pool.

We started trying to remove the water last fall with a syphon pump, but it was hard to keep the water flowing, so we eventually gave up. We tried to get the majority of the leaves off of the cover before the winter, but that was about all we did. When the snow and ice on top of the cover started to melt this spring, we decided it was time to start thinking about pumping the water off again. This time we started with a small transfer pump that hooked up to a garden hose. The box said it would pump a couple hundred gallons an hour, so we thought we were good. We also bought a disposable 100ft vinyl backwash hose from the pool store that we unrolled down the hillside into the bottom of the ravine to help avoid washouts on the hillside. We left that setup running for a couple hours at a time, several days in a row, but we weren’t seeing a lot of results. So, we decided to do a quick calculation of the approximate number of gallons we thought we needed to pump off of the pool cover and came up with nearly 2000 gallons (assuming it was about a foot deep in the middle and we didn’t get any more rain, both of which are conservative).

We messed around with using the smaller pump for a few more days, but eventually got impatient and bought a larger 1/4 hp submersible pump that was still light-weight enough to sit on the pool cover. For a more permanent drainage solution, we also bought some black corrugated pipe to run down the hillside, figuring we would use it for backwashing the pool filter as well once we opened the pool for the season. (The disposable hose we started with had burst in a few spots when it got below freezing one night and there was still water pooled in it at places.) The larger pump worked a lot better for removing large amounts of water from the pool cover, but it still took a good 5-6 hours of pumping to get to the point where the cover was starting show in places. Once we got to that point, we went back to using the smaller pump to get the last little bit of water since that pump seemed less likely to get plugged up with leaves.

Overall, it took us a lot longer to get all of the water off of the pool cover than we expected and there was a lot more of it there than we anticipated … I think we now know why the pool company charges $400 to open a pool with a tarp cover, but only $150 to open a pool with no cover. For next year, I think we’ll probably consider getting a mesh cover that’s anchored into the ground all around the pool since that should greatly reduce the amount of effort to open the pool in the Spring – and it should also help avoid all the issues we’ve been having with animals tearing up the water bags over the winter, causing the cover to slide into the pool …