Vacation time what now?

[Digger]

Thanks again to everyone for all the help on here!! You are all wonderful! I don't remember the last time my pool looked so good. It is the first summer that I have not had algae climbing up my walls! I have been maintaining levels, sometimes they get down lower than I would like them, but I bump them back up. My pool has been beautiful all summer since doing the big change over. NOW, I am leaving for 4-7 days for the beach, what do I do with my pool, to ensure it stays clear. I have a friend I can ask to come up and put bleach in for me. Thanks for the input.

[Phillbo]

Add a Salt system

[waterbear]

If you can have someone put the bleach in great, otherwise get a floater and put trichlor in it to chlorinate the pool while you are gone. (Trichlor DOES have it's uses!)
Adding a dose of polyquat 60 algaecide (NOT any other kind) is also good insurance.
Finally consider adding borates to your pool to 50 ppm. Besides the other water enhancing and pH stabilizing effects of borates it is also an excellent algaestat. It is much longer lasting and much less expensive to use than polyquat 60 given that polyquat needs to be dosed weekly and borates only once a year to "top them off" I go away every summer in july for two week, live in Florida, and just shut my pool off for the duration after shocking it. Since I have added borates (since 2006) I have returned to a pool that, while there was no chlorine, there was also NOT a trace of algae!

[aylad]

If you do decide to use the Polyquat, keep in mind that it will deplete your chlorine. So add the Polyquat, wait 24 hours, then raise your chlorine back up to shock level. If you can have someone come put some bleach in the pool a couple of times during the week, I don't think you'll have any trouble while you're gone.

Janet

[CarlD]

My routine is to have my father-in-law add a gallon of bleach every other day we are away. For my pool, it adds about 3ppm of chlorine and that seems to be enough. I usually come home to a clear, or mostly clear pool.

[Digger]

Now, I am really confused, LOL! First of all before I do anything. When does a person shock their pool? Please bear with me, I am coming off of 14 plus years of Baq, and shocking it often with a separate chemical. How do I go about shocking it? I am guessing just putting in a high dose of chlorination? So maybe if I shock it before leaving and let the filter run 24/7, plus have someone put bleach in for me, that should be suffcient? Or do the other suggestions that others gave me. What are borates? Is that Borax? How do I regulate them? I have been running high on my PH and keep putting muriatic acid in to reduce it. Today it was about 7.8 again. Thanks again!

[Digger]

Sorry Carl, I posted and saw your post afterwards. Yeah, that is kind of what I was thinking may work best. I guess I need to get my PH under control, and if I could have some help on shocking? Do I chlorinate to get levels up to 15? THanks again.

[blessedbeingmom]

We just got back from vacation. We added a starting dose of Polyquat, then shocked (however, we didn't wait the 24 hours, as we didn't realize we should have until it was too late and we were about to leave). Mid week (4 days later) my DH's parents came by & put in about a gallon of bleach. Our pool is about 5000 gallons. We put a cover (with a vented area) over the pool, but it fell in while we were away. The purpose of the cover was supposed to help keep the chlorine from dissipating as fast. Nonetheless, we came home to a clear pool.

[Watermom]

Digger,
Shocking is just super-chlorinating. You can use bleach to shock. How high to shock to depends on your CYA level. Can you give us a current reading so we can verify how high you need to shock to? If you shock before you leave and have someone who can come and add some bleach every couple of days and run the pump for a few hours each day, you should be fine.

[waterbear]

What are borates? Is that Borax? How do I regulate them?

Borax is one way to get borates in your water (the least expensive but not the easieist but it's not that hard.) You only have to add them once since they are like CYA, they don't go away except by splashout or backwashing. They are also used in biguanide pools (bacqua and softswim) but at higher levels than in chlorine pools. For commercial borate products--Bioguard has Optimizer, Proteam has Supreme, Pool Life has Endure.
There are others but plain 20 mule team and muriatic acid work just as well.
LaMotte makes an excellent borate test strip that is accurate enough for what is needed.
If you want more info PM me after you get back from vacation and I will direct you to some threads that explain all about them and how to add them inexpensively with borax and acid so you can decide for yourself. It's really pretty easy.