Quote Originally Posted by amyinraleigh
- Raise pH (do you have a target #?)
- Raise alk (do you have a target #?)

- How bout the pump? Will I be OK leaving it off?
This is great, I will be worrying about my animals so much it will be awesome to not have to also worry about my blue vinyl bag of water.....
Thanks so much, Amy
Answering the question of how much to raise the pH and alkalinity gets back to the chlorine demand of your pool, which we do not know. Let's assume that your pool will consume 0.5-1 ppm of chlorine per day (lower than normal due to the pool cover). You didn't say how large your pool was and that will determine how many pucks you would need.

My calculations show that the 0.5-1 ppm per day chlorine introduction by Trichlor and consumption (usage) by your pool would lower the pH by 0.3-0.6 (starting from 7.5) and would lower the alkalinity by 5-10 (starting from 100). Since the alkalinity helps to buffer the pH swing, I would suggest increasing it to 120. As for the pH, I would suggest increasing it to 7.7

Some might be concerned of the lower chlorine effectiveness at a pH of 7.7, but due to the CYA buffering effect on chlorine (HOCl specifically), you only lower your disinfecting chlorine amount by 10% by being at 7.7 instead of 7.4 pH and we want to avoid having you come back to a pool that is too far on the acidic side.

As for the pump, I would recommend keeping it on, even if that means you need to do some work to take the skimmer off and replace with the strainer.

Just out of curiosity, are your animals staying at a shelter or someone else's home? What kind of animals are they? I can't imagine what sort of pet you could leave for 10 days without needing fresh food or water.

Richard