Keeping water clean when removing a dirty solar cover???

[gonefishin]

Hi all,

I'm a new pool owner (which may be very obvious from my question ;) ), but I was wondering if there is a good way to remove a solar cover (from a 24' AGP)?

My solar cover seems to be picking up some leaves, pollen etc. and a little bit of wind borne dirt. The cover isn't covered with decaying leaves and dirt...but there is enough on top that when I remove the cover...all the dirt and leaves end up in the water.

Am I overlooking an easy method for removing the cover? or keeping the cover clean while on the pool? or is this just part of spring and fall?

thanks,

dan

[JohnT]

I don't think you can avoid it. If mine gets really dirty, I use the hose to wash the dirt toward the skimmer while the filter is running, and much of the crud goes into the skimmer directly. I believe I picked that idea up here, but don't recall who originally posted it.

[PatL34]

Dan,

I remember having to go through this a year ago after Hurricane Charley had destroyed my pool screen. Used the solar cover during the following winter, and when I removed it, there was one green mess loking up at me, tadpoles, frogs, leaves by the zillion and other debris, this was occuring even with the SWC in action.

My first act was to shut off the pump, as the skimmers, and pump basket was full. Emptied those, and started to remove the stuff in the pool with a leaf rake until 99.5% of the stuff was removed. Did not want to add any chemicals until this was done.

Started vacuuming to waste and brushing the walls at the same time. Still could not see anything at the bottom. Emptied the pump basket umpteen times. I did not want any of this stuff to go through the filter, as I would have been backwashing continuously.

Then started circulation bypassing the filter and shutting off the SWC. Added 45 lbs of shock (this the truth) and about 10 gallons of bleach in a 20,000 gallon DiamondBrite pool. The green color started to change to cloudy whitish telling me to that the chlorine was doing it's stuff. Vacuumed to waste, to move the stuff of the bottom.

It took two days at the outside to get the water clear, and my wife was shocked (no pun intended) to see it so clear so quick.

I then turned on the SWC, established the water chemistry without too much trouble.

The moral here is no matter how well you use the solar cover to protect your water over the winter, and keep it lean, the leaves and debris will try and get in there.

In your case, I would use a strong jet from a garden hose to blow the debris over the edge. Then take off the cover and remove any leaves, etc. that could have got into the pool, skimmer, etc.

There are others here who can suggest better than I can how to keep a pool clean over the winter.

Hope this helps.

Pat

[prh129]

I like John's idea.

I've been having the same problem and what I noticed the last time I took the cover off (using a solar reel on a 24' AG pool) is that when I get to the last third or so, there is a lot of debris on top of the cover that would normally fall into the water when the end comes up so if I get the hand skimmer at that point and scoop out as much of that as possible, that should help reduce the amount of stuff going into the pool. Combine that with John's idea of hosing the cover off first and that might be as good as it gets.

Peter

[gonefishin]

great suggestions...thanks all!


I think I'll be using a combination of all the methods listed above :)

dan