Pool Opening
Swimming pools here in Massachusetts are generally opened in May, some people open early in the month, and some prefer to open their pool towards Memorial Weekend.
Opening yours early will lessen the likelihood of having to deal with algae. As the days begin to warm up, green house effects cause algae growth.
In-ground And Above-ground Pool Opening Instructions
Opening your pool will go smooth and the water will clear faster if you take your time, and thoroughly follow these instructions.
- Remove any water and all debris that has accumulated on the pool cover during the winter.
- Test your pool water and balance the alkalinity 1st. Get your self a kit to test all chemicals, or bring your pool water to the store where you buy them.
- Roughly adjust your PH level.
- Shock the ever living hell out of the pool, I recommend always using liquid shock / chlorine.
- Remove pool plugs, and install pool pump and filter assembly.
- To make sure pool clears really fast, vacuum pool straight to waste. You will loose a little water, but it is worth it!
- Run pool and maintain a “clean filter”, and high level of chlorine till pool water is clean and clear.
Pool Closings
People here in Massachusetts close their pools around Labor Day Weekend, if you have a pool heater, you can wait about a month longer. There is one important difference to closing an in-ground pool, vs. closing an above-ground. Clearing the lines to and from the pump and filter equipment. Note* If you are looking to clear lines to a caretaker system, floor-sweeper system, or water feature like a water fall, these systems are beyond the scope of this article.
Closing In-ground And Above-ground Pools
- Clean Pool – don’t close a dirty pool, unless you let it go so far that it makes more sense to deal with it during the next years opening
- Lower the pool water below skimmer opening
- Blow out or remove pool lines and install winter plugs, and a skimmer gizzmo (it is actually called a gizzmo)
- Dump in the proper amount of algaeside for the gallons of water you have. If you have a cement or gunite pool, add some stain guard.
- Pull pool ladders and handrails
- Winterize pump and filter
- Cover the pool, if you have an above-ground pool, put in an air pillow or two
- If you have an automatic timer that turns your pool on and off, shut down fuse, or pull trip switches
If you do not close your pool properly you can end up with costly damage to your pool return and feed lines. You may want to hire someone to do a partial closing, which cost roughly $120.00
You may have noticed I did not include adding any chlorine or stringing chlorine canisters in my closing instructions. This is because chlorine will not last long in the pool, and high doses of chlorine will damage pool covers, or at least cause them to fail years to soon.
