Question for pool owners w/ lots of trees...

[Spoisal]

ok - here's the scenario. We just had an inground pool put in & it was completed in early fall. The pool is being closed this week. The month of October has been a MESS of falling leaves. I never knew leaves were so dirty - we have lots of floating debri that I assume is coming from the leaves (we skim manually & have a autovac, but we can't keep up). The debri could also be coming from our yard which is currently unlandscaped. We are getting the final grade, topsoil & grass seed this week. To solve the October mess, I assume we will use a solar cover on the pool (don't have this yet) in the future....OR just close the pool Oct 1. For those of you that have a lot of trees - do you find that they trees create a mess in spring & summer as well....or is this mostly a fall problem. I never knew these trees would create such havoc!!

 

[brerrabbit]

Mostly the fall. It seems my polaris and the skimmers can keep up the rest of the year. Of course I live in Texas and a pool cover is just not something I really want to do with our pool. We heat it several times during the winter to swim for a few days and so I just have to rake leaves and empty my polaris bag multiple times a day.

 

[jenny2]

Well, one of the joys of living in New England is that it's just too cold to go swimming when the leaves start to fall, lol. We usually cover our pool by the end of September, so the falling leaves aren't a problem ( we just make sure to scoop them off of the cover before it snows ).

That being said, we DIDN'T cover the pool till just yesterday... and it's a mess!

 

[Kimberly]

Usually we shut our pool in late/mid september to avoid this problem outright. A nice cover is very expensive, but worth it in the long run. Leaves can also stain the bottom of a nice white concrete inground pool very easily...

 

[dg39]

The polaris is a godsend. We did have several trees that made a mess when the pool was opened. One was a berry tree and the others were regular trees. We had them removed. If you don't have a polaris, you should consider getting one. It makes keeping up with the pool a heck of alot easier.

 

[Spoisal]

Thanks for the responses. We do have a RayVac autovac...is the Polaris the same type thing? How many hours per day do you run it? All day? Just a night? Thanks!

 

[damo]

This year we invested in a pool net (about $100). It has been wonderful!!!

 

[jenny2]

damo... what type of pool do you have? We have a couple of trees near our pool that drop twigs, leaves, etc into our 18' aboveground pool and I had thought about getting a pool net to try and keep it cleaner. Are they hard to put on and take off? Can 1 person do it themselves?

 

[Kahana-ri]

We still have yet to close our pool and the leaves keep falling! The water is disgusting. DH is going to be spending some serious time cleaning the pool before we close it for the winter. Something having a pool in NE is more trouble than its worth. We really only use it for two MAYBE three months out of the year.

 

[Toby'sFriend]

this year school started mid-August and by the end of August nobody was swimming in it. I think it was the first week of September that we closed it. I just couldn't justify spending the $$ for the gas water heater when nobody was using the pool. We do the pool closing ourselves, it isn't hard once you learn how.

I have found that our pool is never dirtier than when the kids aren't swimming everyday. Having kids splashing around keeps all the dirt up off the pool floor and sends it through the filter.

We are right up against a forest preserve. The years that I have waited until October to close the pool - I have had to go out there with a net a couple of times a day to clean out the leaves. Once they start hitting the bottom, no way that little vacuum thingy can keep up.

 

[Lynn CC]

We closed ours Sept. 9 because we have purple plum trees all round the pool, they are beautiful, but what a mess in the fall. Thousands of tiny leaves fall and they would stain the pool because of the purple color. No one swims in Sept. here. They do make a Hard Solar Cover that keeps the leaves out, but it's expensive. I let our polaris run whenever the pool is running, various times throughout the day and night which adds up to about 10-12 hours depending on the weather. It does a great job, I really don't have to vacume by hand all summer. What kind of trees do you have around your pool? Springtime isn't usually a problem.