Advice needed for mostly unmanaged pool

Hello All,

It is great to see this forum is still up and in operation. I first signed up in the early 2000's for help with my new-to-me IG pool with a then-unusual SWG, and the advice I got here was wonderful and has helped me keep my home pool trouble-free, not to mention saving me a lot of $$ :-)

My current problem is that I have been put in charge of an AG 15-ft round Intex pool at a campground I frequent in Central Texas. I first took over management of that pool 3-4 years ago, and it was a mess due to over-use of dichlor and trichlor, and had CYA through the roof. I had it re-filled and put on a strict liquid chlorine diet. I also hard-plumbed a 3/4 hp pump and sand filter to it to replace the glorified aquarium pump it had. At the time we had a caretaker at the campground that I could give routine maintenance instructions to, but we no longer have a caretaker there.

My main problem is keeping up with this pool now. As I mentioned, there is no longer anyone at the campsite on a regular basis, so daily maintenance is not being performed. I am usually at the campsite 1-2 times a month, but it is a 3.5 hr drive for me, so I can't get there more often. I usually try to go up there 2-3 days before any major event and tame the swamp, or at least get it to where it is sanitary.

I realize there is no substitute for daily maintenance, which I do fanatically with my home pool. However, for the reasons explained above, I can't ensure maintenance of the campground pool to more than 1-2 times a month. I realize I am going to have to deal with major issues each time I can get to this pool, but was wondering if the folks here might have some suggestions for anything I can to do to try to keep this pool at least somewhat maintained when I am not there. I think my biggest issue is that I can't maintain a steady supply of chlorine in the pool when I am not there. I will usually super-chlorinate the pool (20 ppm+) and leave a floater with 3 pucks of cal hypo in a floater before I leave and cover the pool, but that does not last long and by the time I am back I have no chlorine, a green pool, and have to start from scratch. Would a chlorine dispenser help out? Any suggestions or recommendations would be very welcome. Thanks!

Lou

Is there no one that can stop by once a week or so to dump A dose of liquid chlorine? If so you could raise the CYA to 150 or so and just run a high CYA/ hgh chlorine pool. Besides that, or maybe a SWCG, I don't know what to suggest. You just can't properly care for a pool without physically being there.

Hi Janet,

Thanks for the suggestions. I had not thought about going the high CYA route, but it does make sense. There is usually someone there every week or every other week during the swimming season, so if I can come up with some simple instructions (such as add 1 bottle of bleach) I might be able to make it work. I'll have to store the bleach in a different location from the rest of my chemicals, otherwise people would be tempted to "self medicate" the pool, which was another problem I had to address.

The SWG is also a great idea -- perhaps the better one. I know I really like the one I have for my home pool, and the idea of having the campground pool regularly chlorinated when it is unattended seems to be a better solution than to have a high dose on a sporadic basis. It would also cut out problems with coordinating the maintenance of the pool among several people. I only have experience with IG SWGs -- I assume it would be the same for the AG? As I mentioned earlier, I replaced the original pump/filter with a standard (Hayward) sand filter and pump, so I would think that adding the smallest in-line SWG on the return would probably work. Am I overlooking anything? Thanks again for your help!

Lou

I don't know anything about the sizing of SWCGs, but you might want to look through this thread to see if this helps any...
http://www.poolforum.com/pf2/showthr...sizing-of-unit

Also, I don't know about about possible corrosion issues on the AG pool--I know that adding SWCG to most AG pools will void the warranty, but I don't know if this is an issue for you or not. Just something to think about.