Vacation Plans and Fall prep

Hey all,
We go away for two weeks at the end of August, come home Labor Day weekend. We always struggle with what to do with the pool. Hubby worries that if we leave the filter running something catastrophic will happen and the filter will burn out. Since it's so close to the end of the summer we wonder if we should just shut it all down before we go but we rarely have the time to do that with all the vacation packing and prep. And there's always Labor Day weekend swimming and maybe perhaps a bit in early September, we homeschool so can use our pool during the days.

So, what do you all do when you go away? How do you manage two weeks without everything going haywire? We don't really have anyone we can ask to maintain for us...it's enough to get someone to feed the chickens and gather their eggs!

Thanks,
JB

When I went on vacation for 2 weeks this summer, on advice of this forum, I just established all of my levels really well (high chlorine, though...I think I had it at about 12 ppm) and turned off the filter and left. When I got back, everything was fine, though I did have a slight green hue to the pool that cleared up within 1/2 a day of adding a good dose of bleach. Of course, after a week, all of my Cl was gone. Long story short, I was swimming the next day.

Normally, I have friends that come over and care for the pool, but one of them had surgery the week before and I didn't want to burden them this time. Also, you can't just ask anyone to do this. They need to be familiar with how to test and add chemicals and what to do if there are problems.

I understand your husband's trepidation entirely. I didn't want a burned out pump or the water level to get too low of any of a dozen other scenarios that played out in my head.

You don't necessarily have to have anybody test. You can just ask them to stop by every 2 or 3 days and slowly pour a jug of bleach into the skimmer while the pump is running. Maybe they would be willing to hang around for an hour afterwards to let the pump run after the addition. They wouldn't really have to test anything.

It would be good if you had a timer on the pump to just run it an hour a couple times a day. However you do run the risk of damage if something does wrong. An alternative would be a sump pump (approx $80 at Home Depot) placed on a lower step with the discharge at the other side of the pool. Put the pump on a cheapo appliance timer. That would give you some circulation. The pumps I use are Flotecs and are just the pump, no float switch. Shock the pool before you leave and run the pH up a little. Also get a floater and load it with pucks and tie it so it stays in the middle of the pool and away from the edges. The pucks drive the pH down thus raise pH before leaving. This should easily get you through 2 weeks unattended.
Al