Talk to me about caring for an above-ground pool with a saline/salt system --

[milovany]

I'm thinking step by step. We've never had an above-ground pool before, but do now. We haven't even set it up and filled it yet. It's the 15' x 48' Intex framed pool. Would love to hear what we're looking at daily/weekly/monthly etc. for care. I know there are a variety of practices; our tendency would be as simple/natural as possible. Expense will be a factor for us. We are looking at a saline/salt system rather than the traditional chlorine system. From a past thread, I gather that upgrading to a better filter than what traditionally comes with an Intex type pool would be preferred. Can look into that, too.

 

Any advice? We're newbies to this, so would love to see it spelled out for us. I did Google and most of what I got was from pool companies (unbiased) or from places like Wiki How whether there were tons of replies that were hard to navigate. Thank you ever so much!

 

ETA -- Sometimes I'm not very clear, I fear. What I am looking for is "Once a day you need to ______. Once a week you need to _____. Once a month you need to _____. Continuously you need to _____." Does that help?

[jeninok]

We upgraded the filter, it was well worth the money! You also want a good test kit with drops, not the strips, they don't test anything well.

 

I also learned that the easiest way to get the pool ready for vacuuming was to walk around the edges, like laps, and make a whirlpool, once everything starts swirling towards the middle, climb out and let it settle. Most of the debris will be in a tidy pile near the middle. The laps were a good little workout too.

 

Take the time to make sure you are putting it somewhere totally level. It took us a week of work to level the area, but only a couple hours to set up the pool. We still ended up having to mostly drain it and resettle it to keep it level. We are about to have our driveway paved, and I am going to have them pave an area for the pool as well, then we will use that pink insulation foam underneath so it will be soft on our feet and protect the pool vinyl.

[jeninok]

We also bought a skimmer attachment from Big lots, I think it was 20 bucks. It really helped get the leaves and bugs and stuff off the top before they sank to the bottom and made it get yucky. The only chemicals we used were stabilizer at first, and after big water changes, and liquid bleach. There is a pool calculator online that is really helpful for figuring out what and how much to add.

[mom2att]

We have this pump. Huge difference. We also have this saltwater system. Again an improvement over the less expensive model. With these two systems, I change the filter weekly (I don't throw it away--just rinse it out and re-use it). I run the pump for 4 hours per day and the salt system for 3. Both come with a timer feature so they just switch on every day. The pool stays clean and clear this way. Occasionally I will take a sample to the pool place nearby and have them check it, and occasionally I will have to add a little chlorine. The salt system beeps if the salt is too low, and that rarely happens. Our pool stays up all winter and we run the system then as well. Took one spring of massive mosquito breeding in the pool to realize that keeping the water moving and chlorinated even in the winter was a necessity!

 

Vacumming is a pain with the system that comes with the pool, so we bought an automatic cleaner that attaches to the filter system. We also bought a different skimmer attachment, as the one that came with the pool had holes that were too big and too much stuff got through.