Well, it's been three days now and it looks fine to me. Since my regular maintenance includes adding muriatic acid on Wednesdays and Saturdays, I think I'll run the pumps only on those days for a while, except for freeze-protection runs.
Well, it's been three days now and it looks fine to me. Since my regular maintenance includes adding muriatic acid on Wednesdays and Saturdays, I think I'll run the pumps only on those days for a while, except for freeze-protection runs.
Tom Wood
15K IG Plaster, Sand Filter, Polaris 180
The pool did fine with a Saturday/Wednesday only to run the pumps. We're about to have a week or more of nasty weather with lows in the low 20's and daytime highs in the mid to upper 30's, so not really a hard freeze. To be safe I took the drain plugs out of the pumps, opened the pump basket and set the multi-port valve to an intermediate setting so it's open to air. Today I just dribbled some bleach around the edge and used the leafnet to stir the water. I'm betting this will work for several weeks.
Tom Wood
15K IG Plaster, Sand Filter, Polaris 180
Now that our ice storm has melted, I put the plugs back in and turned the pumps on for a while to get the leaves out of the water. All working fine and very little need to add chlorine or acid. The storms tend to blow through here about once a week for the next several weeks, so taking the plugs out that often isn't really a chore. I discovered they are plastic and hold their seal even if finger tight, at least for a while.
Tom Wood
15K IG Plaster, Sand Filter, Polaris 180
Dunno if anyone is still reading, but I let it go two weeks without a pump run, and other than a collection of small debris on the bottom the pool did fine. I've run it for a few hours over the last couple of days just to clean up a bit, but I'm pretty sure I could have let it go indefinitely until spring arrives. Our electric bill has dropped significantly and I'm going to turn back the summer runtime too.
EDIT: My recent maintenance consisted of adding a little muriatic acid and bleach twice a week (amount based on either testing or prior experience) and then using a leaf net to clean the water surface and to stir the water.
Last edited by aquarium; 02-04-2007 at 04:04 PM.
Tom Wood
15K IG Plaster, Sand Filter, Polaris 180
Hi - for what it's worth, I live the the Dallas-area, and I've been running my pool 1.5 hours everyday, and that seems to be enough to keep the water sparkling. I did throw in about 1/3 gallon of bleach the other day (11k gallon pool), just in case, as my FC was down to 0.5 ppm.
Tom/aquarium...yes, I'm still reading and interested to see how your experiments are coming along.
After the initial postings, I turned off my scheduled times and let the pool go with just the freeze protection, since it was coming on for parts of almost every night anyway. Recently, I broke down and put on 2 hours of run time during the part of the day I was home so I could admire the waterfall.![]()
The pool water temp actually got up to 50 degrees yesterday, but a front came through and I think it'll be back to the 40's for the foreseeable future.
Joelq...good to hear other pools can survive with reduced pump time, too.
Sandy
15,600 gallon, screened 15x30 IG plaster sport pool with 6x8 tanning area, Aquarite SWCG, Hayward cartridge filter, Polaris 280 cleaner
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