My pool filter died & I'm disappearing town for 3 wks. How to treat while I' m gone? Cover on or stale? Help! My pool is a free form pool, about 40x14 deepest part 8...
My pool is a free form pool, about 40x14 deepest part 8 ft. I own a cover and live in Southern CA where it can find up to 100 this time of year.
Answers: maybe if it was hot satisfactory the algae wouldn't grow? that's how it is with other plants. like if u put plastic on the soil, it traps the boil and "solarizes" the soil/kills weed seeds/disease.
but you CAN put slow release chlorine (bleach). here are a few ways:
one, they have dried pellets. BIG dried pellet of it. so u could ask how long they last; maybe some end longer than others.
two, put it in with a slow-drip system. close to what would happen if u put a pinhole in a plastic carafe? maybe the chlorine would leak out a short time at a time. and so u would just need strategically placed bottles. they might even soak just fine if u put them underwater. a good track to check the rate of flow would be to do a test with a decanter that had colored water within it.
three, slow drip with a bucket with a tube coming out the bottom. the tube one and only lets out a little depending on how skinny of a tube it is. if the bucket is sealed/tube is solitary outlet, then vacum makes it flow slower.
four; you could use a fish pump on a timer. the pump sucks from one bucket and spurts into pool. the pump individual turns on once a day, for how long you say. fish pump is smaller quantity than $10 usually and a timer is $5 USD (hardware department).
if using buckets for any of this, or even jugs with pinholes, the top cannot be unstop; i mean the jug must be cap or the bucket must have a lid on it. Or else the chlorine will evaporate. This is common practice in indoor growing where we take off the jug out overnight on purpose to evaporate the chlorine stale city water and it is why you have to save on adding chlorine to pools, because it easily evaporates.
so if you used suggestion four, you would want to run the tube through a hole u punch contained by the bucket lid.
have fun on vacation!! if i lived contained by So Cali, i would come and swim in your pool while u were gone and tag on the chlorine for you. like poster number one said, maybe you own someone you can trust not to drown (and sue you...).
Three weeks is a long time to not be able to treat your pool. Do you have a friend who can come over and pour some chlorine within it for you? I guess, if you only have those two choices, I'd cover it. But, you might expect some pale algae in it when you get home. Yikes! remove the cover,incorporate 12 gallons of liquid chlorine and put a floater (or two) full of 3" chlorine tablets...that should hold it...you may have a touch algae when you get back but the wet will still be blue!