How NOT to open your pool

One man's tale of stupidity and woe.

1. Timing

Timing is everything they say. They couldn't be more right. I live in the southern US and usually open my pool around the Memorial Day weekend - give or take a week. It's just to cold to swim before then. So, "Why?", do you ask did I open my pool in March. Well, I had the time, so I pulled the cover off. Stupid, stupid, stupid! But not fatal.

2. Chemicals

For years I had followed Ben's advice and used BBB to get the job done. This year I went to StuffMart and got tablets - tablets laced with STABILIZER! Unbeknownst to me (who, me read a label??), I used tablet after tablet unwittingly increasing the cyuranic acid to toxic levels. Combine that to the fact that I wasn't actively testing the water and...

3. Algae

I now had a beautiful sea of green water in my 25' AGP. Thick as pea soup and nearly the same color! And stabilizer off the charts. No matter how much bleach I dumped in, the green never faded. And how do you decrease stabilizer?

4. Draining

Yup. 23,000 gallons of water in a recently drought-stricken state flowing right down the drain. Not to mention the water bill I'm getting next month! After 2 days, the pool was refilled with clean - but still slightly cloudy - water. We actually drained all but about 1', so there was still algae.

5. More chemicals

So after a week of dumping bleach and a little polyquat for good measure, we finally have clear water! Just in time for - Memorial Day!

So the moral of this story is:

Open your pool when you are ready to maintain it and stay on top of the chemicals.