I want to take a rare moment to brag a little. I live in the HOT part of the Sacramento Valley in California. We are in the middle of the summer heat, varying from about 98°F to 113°F at the hottest part of the day. Not like Phoenix (or Death Valley), but plenty hot enough for me. When my family bought this home in 1991 it came with a swimming pool Not my first choice, but it is here so I am attempting to live with it.

Keeping the pool algae free is a never ending battle during the hot part of the summer when the pool water is about 82°F, which seems to be the preferred temperature for things that grow in the pool water. About six weeks ago the water magically went crystal clear! It was beautiful and so inviting. However, about two days after that it turned bright chartreuse! Not an altogether ugly color, but not one you would want to step foot into. Not only was it that color, but it was so cloudy that you could only see about a foot into the water. More like someone poured paint into the pool than water.

That started my summer “chemistry project”. I checked all of the things chemicals that are normally important and found them all to be way out of wack. Ph was skyhigh, combined chlorine was off the charts, total alkalinity was crazy numbers, and cyanuric acid was through the roof. The problem is that when they are all so far out of control most of the tests are no longer valid. You can’t measure one thing accurately when another thing is crazy, so knowing how much of what to put in when is rather difficult to judge. I chased the chemistry for almost a month, at times wondering how long it would take me to fill up the hole with dirt!

Slowly the wild swings started to get smaller, and I eventually could even see the pool sweep on the bottom of the pool. I could tell that success might finally be in reach. However, success wasn’t quite so easy. I had to endure two or three more wild swings in color until it finally seems to have settled down. For the last few days the pool water has been clear, and the algae has finally gone into hiding (I don’t think it is really “gone” – it is just what might be called under control). Many of the chemicals were still out of “optimal” range, but at least they were close enough to be measurable and adjustments could be made without throwing everything else out of wack.

This morning the pool is clear, and ALL of the chemicals are almost centered in the “optimal” range! Yippy! Perhaps it will stay this way for a couple of days, as long as I fiddle with chlorine levels a couple of times a day. The blazing sun and hot temperatures seem to really chew up chlorine.

So now that it is close to good, my wife is wanting to go spend a week or so in our summer cabin in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. That sounds lovely, but I am more than a little concerned about what will happen to the pool while we are gone and there is nobody to baby it along. I am hoping to figure out how to maintain it with chlorine tablets for that period of time. I normally don’t use them because cause they are “stabilized” to minimize chlorine use (a good thing), but the stabilizer builds up over time until there is so much that the chlorine stops working (not a good thing). I think this is what started my wild chemistry project. I had been using tablets over the winter because they are easy, the water is fairly cold and the algae is easy to control. However, when summer came the stabilizer (cyanuric acid) levels were very high, preventing the chlorine from working now matter how much I used, until all the rest went out of control. I am hesitant to add more stabilizer – but don’t know of another solution. I guess I will just keep my fingers crossed in hopes of only a small disaster, and be prepared for another month or so of chemistry adventures.