hoW early is too early to open the pool in Delaware?

[Watermom]

The only drawback is that you will have to take care of a pool that you can't swim in yet because the water will be too cold for awhile yet. But, I also sometimes have to open my pool early because we start having hot days and if I don't, then I know I'm gonna open to pea soup green water instead of clear water. I've opened my pool in March several times and if not then, always in April.

You will have to start adding bleach, etc. and filtering, but in my opinion, that is no big deal. By this time of year, I am usually pretty anxious to start messing with my pool anyways. And, if you do happen to have a night that does goes below freezing, you can just run your pump through the night and nothing will freeze up. As long as water is moving through the equipment, it won't hurt a thing.

[pairadocs]

watermom,

thanks for the quick reply. you are echoing my sentiments. i'm itching to start fixin' the pool. i thought about running the filter thruout a cold night as a safety measure.

i just might do it...

[MrSpeed]

One year the cover blew off in March and I just left it off. Now I take the cover off in March on purpose. The grass hasn't started to grow yet so there are no clippings to get on the cover when you clean it. Also you really don't need many chemicals until the water gets above 50 anyway. Plus seeing the pool without a cover is a nice reminder that summer is around the corner.

[Watermom]

You know, it is funny. We used to tell people that you didn't have to worry about algae in cold water. But, we found out that isn't always true. Al (Poconos) has a really cool picture of algae under ice in his pool. I think he already has it posted here somewhere on the forum in another thread, but not sure exactly where. He also mentioned to me the other day that he sees a little algae in a couple of spots in his pool and he still has ice in his pool --- something like 7 inches worth I think. Weird! Maybe he can dig up that picture and link it here. It is a really neat picture.