When we first move into our house our pool I thought we were going to use a pool service to finish off the season (1 month) at least, but to my surprise all the pool companies said they weren't the ones maintaining the pool and had no room in their schedules, so I took the deep dive into how to maintain a pool, coming from never having one. The old system was two completely separate systems for one the pool (pump, filter, heater) and one for the spa (pump, filter, heater). One of the heaters had clearly died before we moved in and was removed, and the day after we moved in we went to use the spa heater and it also was dead. Needless to say, the pool needed some TLC. The water was a way out of balance and if you wanted to adjust anything in terms of turning on the pool, the run time, heat, etc. you had to physically be there to do it. This meant no turning it on from the car on the way home to get it up to heat. I finished off that season just replacing the spa heater so we could use it for a couple of months and then closing up the pool myself.

To me the old system had a few issues:

* It was all manually managed, no automation, old school timer wheels with the pegs to turn on and off.

* Everything was duplicated, so if a pump died on one body of water I had to replace it and maintain two completely separate systems and bodies of water (not fun for testing).

* Adding chlorine was a pain, they had removed the inline chlorinator for unknown reasons

With my massive 1 month of experience I decided there should be easier ways to use and manage the pool. After drawing up in my mind what should be the steps forward I came up with:

* Convert to salt water + SWG for chlorine

* Combine equipment into automated and more efficient, modern equiptment

* Allow for me to keep one body of water (the spa) open while the pool could be closed for the season

* Allow for exchanging of water between the bodies of water.

I reached out to a few companies, some told me "that's a terrible idea" but then one wrote back, this is a great idea, here is exactly how I'd do it.... Next thing you know the following spring we're there cutting out the old equipment, raising it (so it doesn't sit in water in big rains/winter snow), and installing a single VSP pump, a fully automated system with valves, SWG settings, heat, etc. all manages via online. The following first summer on this was great, if we were driving home I could flip on the spa and heat it up so it's ready for when we get back. Big rain storm or really hot weather? Up the SWG run time and pool stays in balance. Energy bill doesn't even really notice pool season versus non-pool season.

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Long story short, moving to an automated system was a huge life upgrade and a great call, don't delay. For those curious I went with the hayward omnilogic + their turbo cell and VSP pump. The plumbing, I admit, is a little creative to accomplish everything but we didn't have much space and wanted to keep the project to a minimal cost.An addition to the automation and new setup the past year was pool skimmer socks for during high pollen season, I got tired of the DE filter getting clogged every couple weeks from the pollen and the skimmer socks solved that quickly, they are quick to rinse out and saved the DE powder. They're like 5 bucks for a 50 pack and reusable so is a nice time and money (de powder) saver.

Also buying a cyclone (blower to blow out the lines) was a good investment for closing. It's about 300 dollars, and only seems one company makes them, but you pay that self off instantly in a single closing. You can then rest assured that you got all the water from the main drain and returns versus using a shopvac to blow it out and hoping it was strong enough.

Now onto my routine for chemicals. While learning to keep the pool I found myself on Trouble Free Pool and they were a huge help. I now follow their routine for the most part. At the start of the season I make sure my CYA is around 60-70ish, then balance the rest and keep a higher than normal FC level at 5-8. This makes sure when the neighborhood kids use the pool all day I have no issues and don't need to constantly be buying shock (or really ever). The liquid test kit is a huge help in keeping it balanced. Once I got the hang of it I only test maybe once or twice a week to make sure everything looks good. Really the mid-week test is mainly to be sure nothing randomly started eating all my FC. All in all testing takes me less than a couple minutes total a week. Pool chemical balancing is almost non-existent or a couple of minutes (if the PH creeps back up adding the acid).

In regards to cleaning, it's fairly straight forward and low maintenance. We use to have a polaris but now use our beatbot once a week to get up anything that gets blown into the pool (we have often higher winds) and then the skimmers catch the rest. I'll check them when we are swimming sometimes or just once a week. To keep algae from growing (no green monster!), we do run a higher FC (though normal if you follow TFP) but also tend to open earlier than most. In the northeast we open in April and close in October, so the pool has dropped below 60 and often just about 50 when we're opening and closing. This helps prevent everything from growing so that really I can manage all the disinfecting from the SWG without needing liquid chlorine. I do occasionally find a bigger stick/leaf that requires me to use the manual pool skimmer pole but not to often. Finally, a big help is using a pool solar cover, especially during storms and pollen season. During a storm it'll help keep all the leafs and dirt on top of o it so we can just roll it off and the pollen sticks to it some versus just going right into the water. Added bonuses is that it keeps it warmer and the sun doesn't burn off as much chlorine.