New to the forum

[AnnaK]

Pooooool Forum is the place to be . . . sung to the tune of Green Acres.

[BigDave]

Greeeeeeen water is no place for me.
or
Cleeeeeear water is the life I seek.

[CarlD]

Sheila, Hi and welcome!
Ben, Lisa and Janet are all in Southern climates, you are more like me, in NJ. I would hold off till early to mid-April, when you are pretty sure you are past the last snow. I've opened to blooms in the last couple of years, but being a mod here, I'm pretty fearless about hammering it with liquid chlorine and getting the algae dead in 24-48 hours. I think you should wait.

[PoolDoc]

Hey guys, you can always 'open' the pool, without uncovering it!

That way, it remains low maintenance, but you can circulate some bleach (to keep the blooms away!), and then turn the pump off for a couple of days.

[Sheila2e]

Ok Once a gain, I am a newbie when it comes to maintaining a poool. I had on growing up but I have never been responsible for it. lol

@PoolDoc, Soooo How do I "open" it w/out uncovering it? & Our pool is about 14,000 gal (I believe) So how much bleach would I use and how often?

[Watermom]

You can hook up your equipment and go ahead and start circulating the water while the cover is on. If you need to add bleach, you can do so slowly through the skimmer with the return jet eyeball aimed down while your cover is on the pool. You wouldn't want to shock the pool with the cover on, however, as the fumes could damage the cover.

I no longer cover my pool in the winter, but back when I used to do so, I would do what I explained above. By doing so, I could keep a little chlorine in there and keep the pH in range so algae didn't get started but by having the cover on, it kept the debris from the trees, pollen, etc out so I didn't have to do a lot of cleaning for weeks while it was still too cold to swim.

Is your water clear? Do you have test kit? If not, get a Taylor K-2006. (You can order it from the Amazon link in my signature below.) If you don't have a kit, for now, pick up a cheap OTO kit somewhere (red and yellow drops) and test the chlorine and pH and post the numbers.

In your pool, each quart of 6% bleach will add about 1ppm of chlorine. Let's wait until we see some numbers before we advise how much bleach to add.

One last question, what kind of filter do you have?

[Sheila2e]

We haven't even taken the winter cover (we also have a solar cover), so I have no clue what state the water is in yet. :/ We have test strips & the traditional dropper type test kit.

Hayward 110 SwimPro Element, Hayward 2.0 HP PowerPro- is this what you need to know?

I don't know if this helps any either, but we have an ET automatic chlorinator... we don't have/use one of those floating things w/ the chlorine tablets.