Dangers of opening the pool late?

[rtpatter]

What are the potential dangers of opening the pool late. I read where some people don't want to open early becuase of oak tree pollen and I am in the same boat.

I have a loop loc mesh cover so rainwater does get in and I live in Alabama. The temp. is already in the mid 70's I realize that algae is probably setting up in my pool. However, I would really like to wait another few weeks until all the pollen has fallen from the trees before I open because the pool won't truly get used until late May anyway. Is there a risk of staining the liner? I just figured that if I'm not doing permanent damge to the pool I would rather spend an extra week getting the algae out and the water balanced in mid May as opposed to opening now and battling the pollen and other debris that will fall in the next month.

Advice?

[mwsmith2]

Far as I can see, the only problem with opening a pool late is that your swimming season is that much shorter! FWIW, I'm surrounded by oak trees and never close the pool. It's really not that bad to keep up, although it is some work.

Michael

[waste]

Pollen is not stopped by your Looplock cover, it just passes through. If that is your only reason to keep the pool covered, open it. The key determenent on a mesh cover is water temp, when the water gets above ~50 deg., algae can, and will, start growing. The easiest way to deal with algae is to not let it get a foothold in the pool in the first place.
Pollen can easily be filtered out via the skimmer(s), it floats on top of the water. In contrast, algae can be a real "female dog" to get out of the pool. I believe that you are better off opening and maintaning the pool a couple more weeks, than fighting algae for the first week you're open (and backwashing, dumping in chems, vacuuming and readjusting chems) - in the long haul, you should save $$. ( But that's just my $.02 ;) )