Thanks Janet. It is nice to have some good info available from all of you here at this forum. You all have been a big help. trying to get the pH up a bit now but used my last bit of Borax and that didnt do a lot but did get me back to 7.2. I want to take it to 7.5 for now and see how the trichlor holds up. I have had three tabs in the floater for 7 days through the end of today and they are over half disolved. I suppose that if I had 6 tabs in there they would alll be about the same amount dissolved as the three I am experimenting with now. My thought is if I did hav six tabs then my FC would probably be 5.5 probably instead of the 4 that it tested yesterday on only the three tabs judging by the fact that since last sunday when I started the three tabs the FC was 2.5 and now is 4.0. I dont know if that is the right way to think about it though. The only thing I have changed is the pH during the test period. I am probably going to push the TA up along with the pH some more today and continue to watch the tabs to see how long they last and monitor the FC level. Be curious to see how much longer these three tabs last.

One thing I am doing different than I would have to do when I leave is now I dont have the pool covered. Im assuming that there would be no reason that I could not cover the pool while running the pump. I do have a leaf problem that I must deal with using the cover. Since I would only be blocking the 2 hours of direct sun I get on the pool daily I would think the net effect would be a slightly higher FC count. Anyone know of a reason I should not cover the pool while running the pump please let me know.

If these tabs dont make it through the next week then Im thinking I may consider starting out with a much higher FC level to carry me through the second week that Im away. My pool only seems to eat FC at agout 1ppm per day so that may just work. All things being the same if I had started with FC at say 6 instead of 2.5 as I did last Sunday then now I should have a FC of 7.5 with tabs still remaining in the floater. I may have to start awith FC a bit higher than than 6 depending on the time that these tabs last but this could work.